It's my mother's birthday. She died in April, 2013 at 87. I miss her, I miss her as my "go-to shore" to call...but in time, after she died, I realized her death made me more able to understand myself too, and learn and grow in ways I wasn't when she was alive. It's part of the plan. But I miss her. I thought of making her famous dense white cake with fudge frosting...or maybe spaghetti. I remember as a little kid being so excited when I knew she was making her spaghetti.
Over a year ago, a friend I'd known about 7+ years online who was a wonderful, funny, engaged-and helpful-person, died by suicide. Shocking. Sad. From that death, I got to know his mother, who to this day I communicate with online as she continues to grieve, learn, grow, and heal. It is odd how death can bring people together but it happens all the time and I'm grateful for my friend's mother. Seeing her grieve her only son makes me realize how much love my mother had for me, I knew this, but watching my friend's mother grieve makes me realize how many times my mother must have had a broken heart watching me go though hard times as I grew up.
Today my friend happened to send me this FB 'memory' in a message, something I had written on her son's page after he died. How beautiful that it was on my mother's birthday. This thought in this quote became apparent to me as I flew back from my father's funeral, in '08, and I was in the plane in the clouds, and I just felt like he was the sky, the clouds, everything. It physically felt like that.
"I have said before that when a loved one dies, the love they gave, and that I received, somehow expands. I figure that when a person is alive, they have all this love inside them, like energy, and they dole it out over time…but when the body is done, everything is released and the love expands and it explodes out free to be carried all over and merge with everything--the trees and sky, people, flowers…the air…it’s like air, the love expands and we breathe it daily." -- Katherine Dunn
