Do not know whether the wind. I don’t know if this is the golden light of early autumn. I don’t know if it’s the leaves that make up the carpets that color the narrow sidewalks of São Paulo…Maybe all this together makes me sad between April 13th and May 14th. At this exact time, my mother had a cerebral vascular accident (CVA) and was hospitalized until her death in 1999.
The day I walked into the ICU, already in a coma, I remember walking into the hospital playroom and being invaded by the most agonizing thoughts I’ve ever had: “My mother will never meet my childrenIt was a clenched fist in the chest. Until then he would stop crying. Then I gave in forever trying to hold on.
For 23 years I have had recurring, sometimes tormenting, longing: the same knot stuck in my throat, tightness in my chest, teary eyes looking at the horizon and looking for the moon or stars trying to see It’s somewhere in the sky that separates us in these mysterious planes, in The distance traveled between life and death.
Grief plays tricks on us all the time. The Memory fails and suddenly we think we can no longer remember the sound and smellNot to mention imagining what it would be like to have a conversation with someone who is long gone, at such a different time in our lives.
But like a sudden wave in a calm sea, memories continually flip over and topple us without warning. Handwriting in an old notebook, a missing earring in the jewelry box, the garlic squeezer she squeezed in her hands before the rice went to the pot and that’s it: Time, always relative, becomes irrelevant when grief plunges us into a tsunami.
I feel that the layers of imperfection are archaeological sites that I discover every year in my land. I remember a phrase my father told me shortly after her death: “It’s a good thing we don’t immediately realize death means.” And there he is: When my mother passed away I was still in college, I didn’t know how much I would miss her on my wedding day because I still didn’t think about marriage, I couldn’t imagine how I would need to talk about my business because I didn’t have company yet, I couldn’t think how much she wanted some The friendships I make only after they no longer exist physically…. As time passes and whispers of nostalgia erupt in our ear, the sand is removed from these fossils buried with this loss. We discover a haunting treasure and try to piece together a balanced life in the pieces we keep from the time we lived together.
As I said Clarice LispectorMother: Do not die. And now as I write this, at this very moment, my cat, Shade, has walked into my office with her meowing that perfectly mimics a daughter calling me “Mom.” Being a mother is believing in magic, because every mother is simply a conduit for a miracle – giving birth and receiving in the same measure. Not only at birth, but also at the time of departure.
The tremendous absence I feel from my mother is the same as her presence in me. So although I cry a lot every fall (and sometimes also in spring, winter, and summer), I respect every tear as a drop of the infinite love life has given me. “My mother is not dying” because she is still alive inside of meAnd my children and even within that furry affection that I now receive from the shadows on my left shoulder. A mother does not die because every mother – present, absent, sick, needy – is the source of life.
And if I could have one more conversation with my mother, I would say that I understand today that being a source of life is very stressful at times! I didn’t have time to thank her for the nights she’d stayed by my side when I had nightmares, all the while detangling my hair or gently drying the spaces between my toes. I didn’t have time to say my thanks for the lullabies, for they left me in the kitchen even more when I was on the road than I knew how to help, to describe my symptoms to the doctors better than I could. But I would also say that I had time to know – fortunately – that the best gift you gave me was a wide smile Always willing to help and certain that even trying to get it right, I would make a mistake because I knew I was just a human. To all and to all mothers, thank you today!