Faith

Faith Leads the Way Home

Today is 36 years to the day since you died.  It was Labor Day that year as well.  September 3, 1984.  36 years without a mother.  Without you. 36 years since I looked into your eyes and felt you stroke my hair.  Actually, the last time you stroked my hair was the day before you died.  I only remembered that a few years ago.  Funny how we seem to forget things that seem so important.  On Saturday you came home from the hospital.  I remember thinking how crazy that was given how ill you were.  I remember sitting in the family room with your doctor that day.  He said there wasn’t anything else he could do and that you wanted to go home.  What was left unsaid was that you wanted to go home to die.  I was so angry at him and you.  I felt like you were giving up, giving in, ending the fight.  But the truth was the fight ended long before that day.
But I was a 20-year-old, angry girl that just wanted to be a normal girl that didn’t have to deal with this crap, didn’t have to face living the rest of my life without you.  I didn’t want to face that my mother, my beautiful brown-haired, ponytail-wearing, basketball-playing mother was dying and was just giving up.  I wanted to run away.  So I did.  I ran to my girlfriend’s house for the day.  But, I had to be back Sunday morning to be with you while dad went to work.  I walked into your room and felt so angry.  I’d like to say that when I saw you that my anger disappeared but it didn’t.  It was still early in the morning so I laid down next to you on the bed.  I wanted to be able to hear you in case I fell asleep.  Which of course, I did.  I woke up to you stroking my head, my hair.  It felt like it was washing away all the anger, all the pain, the guilt. the grief.  And I kept my eyes closed for a long time pretending to sleep.  Pretending I was a little girl again when you would stroke my hair and everything would suddenly be alright.  Pretending I had never been angry at you, that I had never run away, that you weren’t dying.  At that moment we were just mother and daughter again.  A mother, mothering her daughter.  And then I opened my eyes and your big brown eyes were staring into mine as you stroked my hair.  We smiled into each other’s eyes.  It was as though we were the only people left on our own private island, and for a brief moment, everything was ok.   And then the next day you slipped away.  And I remember thinking that I wished that I had kept my eyes closed longer the day before.  If I’d only known that was the last time you would stroke my hair I would have kept them closed so much longer.
I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately.  I feel you so close in the last few weeks.  And as a more mature woman, I realize that lying there with you stroking my hair and looking into your big brown eyes was our goodbye as mother and daughter.  I recognize it now for the gift that it was and still is.
When I was in Africa with the Lions I felt you.  I sat in a group of women with a white lioness and her daughter.  As the lions purred and growled I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and remembered.  As the sounds of their growls filled my body and soul I remembered who I came here to be.  I remembered my inner lioness.  I remembered my lineage. I remembered that we are all ONE.  And I remembered you telling me I was special.  Thank you for being brave enough to tell me I came from the Star People even though I know it scared you. Thank you for helping me find my way home.