Condolences
Mom's song:
"Lean On Me"
https://youtu.be/tXcCav4zyJI
In the tumultuous recent years that I spent living with my mother, we communicated-live and raw.
It wasn't always pretty.
It wasn't always kind.
But we continued to communicate, live and raw, with the dogged stubbornness that she passed on to me, each from a place of pain, some indignation, some prejudice and yes, some rage; but always from a place of mutual love and respect - the kind without which we all never end up telling anyone - or hearing from anyone - the truth.
As we peeled the layers that were separating us (the same typical layers that separate all of us from eachother), pain added to pain, until, a couple years in, I told her that I thought it would be best for us both if I moved out. Then the true concern of her heart fell before me with three words:
"I need you!"
I believe the terror of watching me go back into my darkness alone, out of the reach of her loving, helping hand, forced the truth from her heart, right there, right then.
I honestly believe that if I had walked out on her back then, she would have "died" again. I told her there and then that I'm not going anywhere.
From that day on, I understood her problem:
Our mother didn't need her children to clean her eavestroughs, or do anything else for her. Rather, she needed - absolutely NEEDED - us to lean on her. Any treasure she had, up to and including her very life if need be, was carefully laid up, in her heart, for her children.
For the last year or two of her life, I knew my mother's song off by heart, and she knew mine. Mom's song wasn't always heard clearly by her intended audience: Her children, the only Treasure of her heart.
I believe that our mother may have figuratively, temporarily, "died" many years ago - in the sense that she was in a place that she couldn't distinguish from death - a place of no hope.
There were times when we couldn't make out the music or lyrics of the imperfect, live version she sang to us from our birth until her death. Sometimes her words fell on deaf ears. Maybe, just maybe, she fell silent for a short spell. How were we to have known the difference at the time?
But her heart, even throughout her first time of "death", would not - COULD NOT - stop loving her children.
All our lives, Mom's heart sang to each of us, her children:
"Lean on me, Sweetheart!
Call me, any time, from anywhere!
If you need a friend, I'm just down the road.
And you will always have a home.
Just call me.
Please call me."
-written by Ed Reynolds, October 18, 2019, Okotoks, Alberta.
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