Mother's Day and the return of the gold thread

Flowers that Josh sent me for Mother's Day

"Although children leave us, we are always mothers"

Yesterday was Mother's Day and I woke up around 6:30 am and the first thing I did was check my Facebook page to see...what?  I don't know what I expected to see but the fact that I did not see a post from Alysia hurt like hell.  I checked my phone for texts...to see what? I don't know but I sure didn't get a text from Alysia for mother's day.  No phone calls...nothing. I cried. I cried some more and I cried all day off and on. The day before Katie and I had gone to Alysia's grave and laid flowers that my mother had sent me for Mother's day.  I wanted to put them on her grave as it was from one generation of mother to the next to the end of the line in the form of my daughter's grave. Motherhood ended with me on our side of the family.

When I checked Facebook throughout the day yesterday I saw many posts about how great of a mother's day everyone was having and I became more and more sad.  I realize that people should enjoy their day with their children but those posts were like stabs in the heart. I felt forgotten and I thought of Katie's friend in Ontario who just recently lost his mom and how he was on the other end of that huge void. I pictured him sitting there looking at the posts on facebook and wondering if he felt as sad and bitter as me.

 I didn't think I would react as emotionally as I did to Mother's day considering when Alysia was young she would wish me a Happy Mother's Day and would apologize because she didn't buy me a gift. I would reply "it's ok, it's just another day created by Hallmark and it's enough for you to just wish me a Happy Mother's Day." Now that she's gone, it's not just a Hallmark- made occasion for me, it's the day I should have heard from just one person and I didn't. The day that confirms my identity as a mother still and I got very few acknowledgements of that. At one point yesterday, I had a proud mother moment when I thought about the fact that I was a mother to an angel now. An angel!  wow, that is pretty amazing.  That was short lived though and the void of her absence took over me.

Throughout the day yesterday in my sadness I would look at the flowers Josh sent me and a surge of love came over me for him, it made my day a little bit better.  The card on my mother's flowers, quoted above, began to melt away a cold spot in my heart. Yet my heart ached so much yesterday.  This morning I woke up crying again.  I wasn't able to go to work.  I felt so alone and I sat in bed after Katie left for work and cried so hard. Suddenly the journal I write in to Alysia fell over on the bedside table and I picked it up and began to write in it.  I have 1 1/2 pages left in it after what I wrote today.  I don't know if I should continue writing after I'm done this one or what will that last page and a half contain?  How will I end it?  If I do get another journal I feel like it has to be similar to the one I've been writing in.  It came from the cathedral in Washington, a very special place in my heart.  I found it odd that the journal fell over and snapped me out of my crying.  For a a few minutes I read the entries in my journal. A journal entry  that was a week or so after Alysia's funeral, I wrote "I am glad I was able to cry because I am afraid that after crying so much I would have no more tears to shed".  It's almost 10 months later and let me say that there has been no shortage of tears.

I decided to write a blog post today while I was off work so that I could get it all out. I set up my laptop on the kitchen table in front of Josh's flowers and out of the corner of my eye I caught a sparkling light in his flowers.  I take a closer look and saw a bit of gold on a flower bud. So I got up and took a real close look and lo and behold there is a very fine thread of gold filament thread that is laying amongst the foliage of his flowers!  I took a picture of it and I apologize for my crappy Iphone 3G camera (the original Iphone) but here it is.

It's blurry but you can see the gold filament thread running randomly through the flowers.

I knew, it was Alysia's way to say Happy Mother's Day through Josh's flowers and now they brighten my day even more. To get an understanding of the significance of the gold thread see my post http://sheisfreerthanabird.blogspot.ca/2012/03/golden-thread-and-power-of-creativity.html

Yesterday I couldn't do this because I was too hurt, but today I'd like to wish every mother out there a Happy Belated Mother's Day because you deserve the recognition.  I would like to wish those who aren't mothers to people, but to furry creatures, a Happy Mother to a furry creature Day too.  I would like to wish those of us who lost a child a Happy Mother to an Angel Day and finally to those children who lost a mother I'd like to wish them a Happy Angel Mother Day.

xo

Trish

Written in Stone

A beautiful tribute to my beautiful daughter with an amazingly fitting Radiohead quote.

It has been 8 months, yesterday, since Alysia passed away.  Pretty much on the 8th month mark her headstone finally arrived.  Happy early birthday present to me...  Tom Sr had seen it first and he emailed me pictures so I was somewhat prepared when Katie and I went on Saturday after work.  No matter how prepared I thought I was, it was still so sad and so hard to see.

I remember when I received the sketches for her stone from Oakridge Memory Gardens, seeing her date of birth on a headstone seemed harder than her date of death.  I never really quite understood why I reacted so hard to that.  Maybe it had to do with the fact that giving birth to her was such a happy time in my life, it was an identity I was proud to be...mother.  I was a mother.  Now that identity has been taken away.  People tell me I am still a mother but it's hard for me to completely identify with this anymore. I know I was a mother, but am I still now?

I was at a union workshop for 2 days and at the table during a lunch break a lot of the women were talking about their teenaged children and I sat there dreading the possibility they ask me if I had children. What do I say? Yes but she passed away 7 months ago? Or do I say "No" and just end the conversation?  I had an anxiety attack at lunch because of this silly scenario. I still do not know how to reconcile these confusing thoughts.

If you look on the stone, you will see a quote from Radiohead.  Alysia was a die-hard Radiohead fan and Lotus Flower was one of her favorite songs.  Although I knew she loved Radiohead I didn't know this was her favorite line from the song.  I was just guided to this when trying to choose what to put on her headstone . I believe she had a hand in this. Katie and I brainstormed a tattoo for me to do based around this quote so I could permanently honor Alysia's memory and have her close to me physically at all times.

There was something comforting about touching her stone. As if by touching her stone, I was touching her spirit. By talking to her name on the stone she could hear me in heaven more clearly. When I left, I kissed the top of the headstone and it felt like I was kissing the top of her head.  I understand now why headstones, grave markers of some sort, are so important to those left behind.

Resting peacefully by her nanny.

Headstones not only help the people left behind but will tell a story to the future generations.  As a person walks through this 50 years from now, they will be able to piece together the history of this little family...As Tomi will be buried next to Alysia and I will be buried across.  On my headstone I want written "Loving mother of Alysia D Abriel" so that I die with the identity of being a mother still.

I miss you Alysia xoxo

Phoenix rising

Some of you have seen this on my facebook as my profile pic once in a while.  I found this on the net to convey in an image how I felt at times.  It was like I was in either a womb waiting to be reborn and evolve or a prison waiting to die.  I was in nowhere land. A state of in between. If dusk could be a place that's where I was.

I was incubating in this place of darkness, waiting for one outcome or the other...waiting for the emotions to pass, to burst out of this womb or to die within the walls.  Yet the walls were thin enough to see light trying to penetrate through. All the while knowing I could bust out  if only I would make that choice. When I had the strength I would peak out a seam in the walls and see what was out there and at times I would pinch the seam together and stay within.

On New Year's Eve I went for a walk in the woods and came upon the sad pregnant lady tree. I talked to her.  I told her how I desperately wished I could make her happy so that she wouldn't have to be eternally sad.  I told her she should be happy as she is pregnant.  Like a crazy woman in point pleasant park, I am standing there touching her head and her belly crying for her...crying for me. (Luckily it was a cold rainy day and only one person saw me) I realized I was talking to myself.  Not in the mundane sense of thinking aloud but literally talking to a representation of myself.  Yet I didn't understand the pregnant part.  I told her I was once pregnant and had a beautiful daughter and now she is gone.  I cried with the tree lady.  A voice in my heart said "you are also pregnant, you are spiritually pregnant you can hold onto this pregnancy in your eternal sadness or you can give birth to what you have growing inside of you."

I realized, all the while I was incubating in the cocoon, I was also incubating something within me. I decided at that moment I would bust out of the walls of the cocoon and not have the fate of the sad tree lady.  I will welcome what ever it is that I am going to give birth to.  So today I received another strong message to let go of the old ways of thinking, the old patterns of behavior and to embrace this new creative energy brewing inside of me. I know this message was from Alysia today, the circumstances too magickal to  ignore.  She wants me to rise out of the ashes and embrace this new power within me. And like a phoenix, I stretch my wings, my heart and spirituality engulfed in creative flames. I feel the regenerating energy of the fire. I look this way and that way and I see Alysia there with me, ready to guide me. I feel a whole new me reborn with memories of the old me so that I do not forget what brought me to those ashes, what brought me to a place of rebirth.  Soon when I have the complete strength, I will flap those wings aflame with creativity, power, and spirituality and fly. The wind from my flight scattering the ashes below to feed the earth for another type of growth.  Those ashes are a part of me and those ashes will provide food for other living beings to grow.

Happy 21st Birthday my beautiful girl.

This picture was taken on her 19th birthday.  By the time she got to blow out her candles we had already started to eat her cake :)

21 years ago...  

To this day I woke up at 6am and was in labor with you.  You were born on your due date exactly at 12:00pm . It’s as if you were on an agenda.  “I will be born when I’m due exactly in the middle of that day. I have things to accomplish. I don’t have much time.”

I never held a baby in my life before you, you were so beautiful, so round, with lots of hair.  The nurse said I gave birth to an Eskimo, your hair was so dark and long and thick. You had a set of lungs on you that even made the nurse run to me in the middle of the night with you. “Take her!” she said “she’s keeping the other babies awake in the nursery!” and left me there with you screaming in my arms.  It didn’t surprise me when you were in a “Screamer Band” in your teens.  

I was so inexperienced as a mother but I vowed to always do the best I could. I watched you have your first belly laugh over nothing, I watched your teeth come in, I watched you walk at nine months, I listened to your full, well spoken stories by the time you were two, I watched you figure out reading at the age of two.  You were so precocious in so many ways.  You had things to accomplish. You didn’t have much time.

I watched you as you thought deeply over events in life. I watched you cry over hurt animals. I watched you stand up for the underdogs of the world. I watched your intelligence and sensitivity take over your emotions. 

I hugged you, I kissed you, I play-wrestled with you, I played jokes on you and once in a while I yelled at you.  We rarely fought, we were so close.  I watched you go through your teenage years in amazement as to how much more stable you were than I ever had hoped to be when I was a teenager.  

I watched you become obsessed with your passions. I watched you pinch your pennies. I watched you cry over boyfriends. I watched you become a beautiful young woman.  I watched you have dreams for your future in science. I watched you struggle with being an adult. I watched you as you lay in your coffin.  I watched you as they closed the coffin over you. I felt my heart shrivel.

Now it’s your turn to watch me. You watch me cry over you and all of my losses.  You watch me laugh at silly animal videos. You watch me as I read and get inspired for my goals for my future. You watch me struggle with living without you. Maybe you chose this short life before you were born so you could watch over me in my second half of my life. From this earthly perspective it just doesn't seem right that a child should watch over her parents. However, where you are now there are no such rules of time or order; there is just love.  Where you are now you embody complete love and light and can't help but watch over me because we are forever connected through mother-daughter bond and love.

Happy 21^st birthday, my beautiful daughter, my beautiful Pumpkin. I miss you so much no words can describe.  You spent almost 21 years on this planet being my daughter and I am grateful for having that time with you.  I would rather have lost you than not to have experienced you at all but I would much rather have had you longer as my daughter than to have experienced this loss.

I send you hugs and kisses. I send you my motherly love that will never ever ever die. I miss you.

Xoxo Mom <3

Unfair

We had beautiful weather the day of the funeral. The day after the funeral it rained. The image in my head of the rain falling hard on the soft dirt of her grave, played over and over again. I'd stand in front of the big windows of the apartment and watch the rain fall. The loneliness of that image in my mind caused me to momentarily stop breathing. No one would be standing by her grave in that dreary wet weather to talk to her and I was so sad. I wasn't there to shelter her from the rain and wind and my motherly instinct was not understanding why I wasn't taking action. I knew she wasn't her body anymore. Knowings from the mind are completely different than knowings from the heart and soul. My heart and my mother-body wasn't knowing yet she wasn't her body anymore.

Most people who attended the funeral had dissipated back to their lives. It was quiet in my space while strangers walked in front of the apartment windows not knowing I was standing there grieving the loss of my only child. They were texting, running from the rain, doing drug deals whatever...their lives were still going, the earth was still turning, the numbers on the clock kept changing. Yet the time in my world had stood still, I was feeling in dead center of the universe as everything moved around me but I stood still.Why were these strangers still living and my daughter wasn't?  It didn't seem fair when I'd see the drug dealers walk by.  How is it they get to stay here but I don't have my daughter anymore? It made me mad but I didn't have the emotional strength to show it. I felt such defeat, I couldn't fight the world anymore.  I was done with it.

Watching the rain, was that God crying, I wondered? No, that was mother nature nourishing her child, the earth. I couldn't physically do that anymore. There will be no more suppers at our place with Alysia.It was unfair.

The weather affects me at the best of times.  It rains and is dreary a lot here.  I guess I was lucky in some weird way that she passed away at the best time of year as we have had good weather for the most part since and that has helped in my healing process. It allowed me to go to the park every day on my lunch hours and be with nature and take a breath.  I worry for the upcoming dreary months that can last right up until the end of June. I hope it won't be as bad as I think it will be for me.