Chapter 65. Soul

This line catches my attention -- about Fleur on her wedding day, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

“While her radiance usually dimmed everyone else by comparison,

today it beautified everybody it fell upon…”

I think of my 1^st half-of-life, when my desire was so much about wanting to be “better than” or brighter.  Now, many years later, with a 2^nd half-of-life hope of beautifying all around me, I can let a truer self emerge, a radiant essence that wants to beautify everything around me.

But I still have many moments of feeling ugly and small and sad, especially as we’ve watched our parents suffer and feel their and my loss, and as I’m feeling bowled over by some of the political craziness and dividedness of the world.

Ideas expressed in the mystical metaphors of the song below help expand me.

My Soul, by Peter Mayer

There a hundred billion snowflakes swirling in the cosmic storm

and each one is a galaxy a billion stars or more

And each star is a million earths a giant fiery star high up in some sky maybe shining on someone

Deep inside a snowflake I am floating quietly I am … infinitesimal impossible to see

Sitting in my tiny kitchen in my tiny home staring out my window at a universe of snow

But my soul is so much bigger than the very tiny me

reaches out into the snowstorm like a net into the sea

Out to all the lovely places where my body cannot go

I touch that beauty and embrace it in the bosom of my soul

And so brief and fleeting in this tiny life of mine like a single quarter note in the march of time

But my soul is like the music it goes back to ancient days

Before it wore a human face long before it bore my name

Because my soul is so much older than the evanescent in me

It can describe the dawn of time like a childhood memory

It is a spark that was begotten of the darkness long ago

What my body has forgotten I remember in my soul

So we live this life together my giant soul and tiny me

One resembling forever one like smoke upon the breeze

One the deep abiding ocean one a sudden flashing wave

And counting galaxies like snowflakes I would swear we are the same

Oh my soul belongs to beauty, takes me up to lofty heights

Teaches sacred stories to me, sanctifies my tiny life
Lays a bridge across the ages, melts the boundaries of my bones
Paints a bold eternal face on this passing moment, 

oh my soul

That my soul paints a bold eternal face on this passing moment somehow gently soothes me during those last months of my mom dying. We all are dying; or at least our bodies are. Yet we all also have a great big eternal soul that carries on.

Mom passed into another existence on August 7, 2016. I write the words of much of this chapter while on personal retreat, a few short weeks after her death. We kids kiddingly wondered if her leaving this world would ever happen since she seemed to just keep going regardless of her many medical challenges (breast cancer x5, COPD, kidney disease, heart problems, large aneurysm, and much more). 

A lot of doctoring with her happened in her last two decades. I was with her during her hospital stay for a mastectomy in October 2008. I wrote this after she had some complications:

Mom had a rough night last night

restless and constipated, nauseated and vomiting

went into surgery this late morning

recovers now from a second surgery in as many days

sleeps interruptedly

after dry-mouth relief of an ice chip or two during a brief awake moment

she comments, “this isn’t much fun for you”

i say, “i have my books, I’m fine, besides, this is way  less fun for you!”

she asks, “how did you sleep in the chair?”

i report, “ok. i had a much better night than yours last night. i’m so sorry.”

oh, mothers

my mother

who can come off as hard, even harsh

with her abrupt “you look terrible” or “what were you thinking?”

with her unexpected-from-grandma exclamation of

“you’re shittin’ me” and “it’s my boobs”

here she is – shitless and boobless

here she is – concerned for me

oh, mothers

my mother

She made it through that surgery to have more, namely an experimental major heart valve replacement in 2012. We considered surgery to repair her large abdominal aortic vessel aneurysm that threatened to burst and potentially kill her, but decided against it: a good decision since the weak vessel never failed.

Previously she recovered from or survived her ailments; with this cancer incidence she did not. Her steady downhill started with diagnosis in early fall 2015 of cancer metasticizing, hospice care starting Memorial Day weekend 2016, nursing home care shortly after that.

Now she’s dead. Maybe it’s fitting that I bookend this story with parents' dying. No more dad, no more mom. I’m more on my own, at least in the realm of parental nurturance and oversight. I determine what’s next, where to go.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself any direction you choose.  

You’re on your own. And you know what you know.  

And you are the one who’ll decide where you’ll go.

– Dr. Seuss, Oh the Places You’ll Go

It’s up to me now to decide, especially where I’ll go in the internal realm. The invitation I sense is to keep learning to parent myself well. 

Adeline & George, m. June 12, 1955

Extend kindness to me, which enables me to better extend it to all around me. I’m aided by seeing the good in the parents I had, who did what they could and who passed down good qualities along with not-as-good. I can embrace all that is within – shadowy and radiant and everything in between – in them and in me.

Mom’s “forthrightness” that oftentimes bruised me, is a quality that many others found refreshing. Her stoism – possibly learned from a young age when her own 20-something mom toughened up after the death of the love-of-her-life husband (“that’s the way life is” said my grandma years later in reference to another tough life event of losing her second husband), and when Mom's daddy that she barely got to know was gone from her life – offers an advantage of being able to compartmentalize when needed.

What I had decided before as bad, actually has some good? 

Can my soul find beauty in most anything? 

Teach sacred stories to me, sanctify my tiny life? 

My soul says yes.

I am entirely ready to have the chains that kept me bound be broken. 
I am entirely ready for the walls I've built around myself to be torn down.
I am entirely ready to give up my need to control every situation.
I am entirely ready to let go of my resentments.
I am entirely ready to grow up.
 - Macrina Wiederkehr