Happy Liberation Day

Today, nine years ago, my Mom passed on.  Usually the week or so leading up to this anniversary finds me fraught with grief and overrun by unnamable emotions.  (Okay, not so unnamable: fear, resentment, frustration, grief, anger, guilt....)  This year has found me quietly introspective.  Perhaps there is too much "living in the moment" for me to get wrapped up in "living in the past".  I think I'm growing up.  Or I'm just very distracted.

Dad is still sick.  It's difficult, sometimes to remember he's dying, when he's having one of his better days- then a moment arises when he's not feeling up to snuff, and Reality comes crashing about.  Our views of the world are so... filtered.  I wake up on the right side of the bed and I see everything with the rosiest of tints.  I go to bed too late, or eat too late, or get a kink in my neck from trying to accommodate Chloe's sleeping preferences and I feel as though Armageddon is just around the bend.  Funny, isn't it?  So easily influenced by outer factors.  I'd like to believe I'm more grounded and centered than that.  But I know better than to believe everything I think- so I sway.  I sway with the tidal rhythms and pulls of my life and I ride that proverbial wave, and try to not swallow too much water.  Sputtering is so not sexy.

I don't miss my Mom like I used to.  I was asked last night if it was getting any easier, her being gone- and it's not.  Not by a long shot.  But I don't miss her the same way.  I've learned to accept her new "form"... really, formlessness.  And am embracing it.  I recognize her in everything.  Certain scents that waft through the air, the way a plush fabric feels under my fingertips, quirky comments made by random people.  I do miss her hugs, and napping with her.  Mom always appreciated a good nap.  I keep trying to explain to Husby that it is something genetically passed down from her, and to simply embrace the necessity of napping.  He's not buying it- but that's simply because he never got to meet her.  Otherwise I'm confident he'd understand.  I miss her advice (which I never followed, but that is irrelevant, and part of why I miss it).  I miss her voice, which sometimes I can hear when I'm being very still- but it's not the same.  

Emptiness and Form.  One and the same.  Our particles buzz about with far more space in between than naught; and yet all we ever cling to is the Form.  Silliness.  Silly unenlightened people.  So wrapped up in what's in front of us, we forget what's really going on.  When I look at it that way, I feel almost selfish for grasping so firmly to the memory of Mom's form.  She was so much more than the sum of her poorly assembled parts.  So much more than they could have ever amounted to- and how wonderful it must be for her to have been liberated from the bonds of illness, pain and suffering.  And yet, all I've wanted for years now, is to "see" her.  I think something just clicked.

Happy Liberation Day, Mom.  I love you.