I have, for some time now, come to believe that death is the most beautiful experience we have as humans. I don’t know for sure what happens when we die and I won’t know until it happens to me. But deep in that place where our beliefs are born, I know for sure, it is a wonderful experience.
I recently lost my mother and was sure it was going to devastate me. She died on Tuesday and I am writing this on Saturday, the day after her funeral.
Not only is my mother released but her death has released me. I’m still trying to sort through the emotions I’m feeling—they are mostly euphoric and I’m wondering why.
I suppose this is something for the psychiatrist couch and I need to go back to the beginning. My relationship with my mother has been an up-and-down one. My sister, who is the oldest, tells me that my mother loved her babies and that her babies brought out the soft, cooing side of her. But once we became kids (there were six of us) she seemed to lose interest in us. My father was always the loving, nurturing one.
The biggest problem I had with my mother growing up was that she never seemed interested in my life. I would come home from school and tell her about my day and she wouldn’t say anything. A simple “that’s nice” would have done but her lack of any response was bizarre to me.
I remember a defining incident that I had around the age of eight, nine, or ten when something really good happened at school and I couldn’t wait to come home and tell my mother. But halfway home I told myself, “no, I’m not going to tell her because every time I tell her something she ruins it by her lack of response.” This, then, was when I stopped telling my mother anything.
Over the years she would complain that I never told her anything. Finally, at the age of fifty-six I told her why. (She made it known that she was uncomfortable talking about feelings.) I was as diplomatic as I could be about telling her but she still took it defensively and the next day would not talk to me. I knew it might be a mistake to tell her how I feel, but I was finally so tired of hearing her complain about how I never tell her anything.
PREVIOUS PAGE
