Missing Mother

"i want my mommie", she said
looking at me she said, "not really."
why not sometimes I do, too

"I look back on my childhood and thank the stars above.
For everything you gave me, but mostly for your love."
Wayne F. Winters, from Ode to Mom

Yesterday, December 10, I came home tired and little grumpy and randomly picked up the book noted below, and opened to the poem. When Mom Leaves. I was intending to post this yesterday, but I spent most of the day napping and in bed.

I didn't remember until today that yesterday is anniversary date of my mother's death well over a decade ago. What a beautiful synchronicity in randomly selecting this poem I'd hever seen on this anniversary date, and equally sweet what I guess to be my body's response of self-nuturing.

The following poem and the passage it undeer are from a wonderful book I recommend to everyone Healing Conversations by Nance Guilmartin:

When Mom Leaves

When she is gone
in a flash,
unbidden,
there is a loss
like no other.
You see
when Mom leaves
there is a center missing
as if the universe
has lost its gravity.

Everything,
everything falls apart
for awhile
until the universe
of our lives
finds a way
back to center.
And somehow
while there is no force
holding it together
the way it was --
somehow
we are
whole again
in
the
middle
of
it
all.

Grief Unburied

"Grief is like a wave," the counselor said to the television audience. "It comes and goes in its own time."

All gone many years ago. When incident reminds us of our loss, we say to ourselves, You'd think the grief would be over by now. The memorial service was one more reminder that grief isn't something you bury like a casket or something you scatter like ashes. It is, like the television commentator described, something that comes in waves. Sometimes those waves tumble you about, leaving you disoriented. Sometimes those waves of grief pull you down like a surging undertow when you least expect it. Sometimes they throw you up on the shore exhausted. And sometimes they hold you in the cradle of their force, gently carrying you toward the sand.

May we allow ourselves to grieve

over 28,000 have affirmed the Charter for Compassion
over 1,800,000 now have joined me to be citizens of Hopenhagen

Wow, now 10,902 people have posted acts of kindness on Yahoo's Spread Kindness page while I was typing my post it jumped to 12,188 acts. Inspiring.