Remembering Mom: Lessons in Becoming Beauty
"It is finished in beauty.
It is finished in beauty."
- Navajo Chant
"Beauty is a deeply spiritual experience. It shouts to us always, "More. There is yet more.' We cannot hope for fullness of life without nurturing fullness of soul. We must seek beauty, study beauty, surround ourselves with beauty. To revivify the soul, the world, we must become beauty."
- Joan Chittister, Aspects of the Heart
Seeking solace and wisdom this morning, I decided to turn to this gem of a book by Joan Chittister. Opening to a random page, I found the passage above. It's exactly what I needed.
Today is the tenth anniversary of my Mother's passing, and I find myself struggling to find a way to honor her memory and her life, to adequately express how extraordinary she was and what an impact she had - still has - on those whose lives she touched. Ten years ago on this day, all I could feel was shock, grief, and an overwhelming sense of sadness and loss. Today, of course, the shock is gone. The grief has softened but will never leave entirely. The sense of loss has broadened and is starting to make room for gratitude and appreciation for the grace inherent in the gift that she was.
Over the course of her life, she suffered tragedy, loss, and injustices, large and small, but she refused to hold onto bitterness and anger. In particular, as she got older, she found a way to let these things go, and in the process, her life became more and more about the embodiment of this idea that Joan Chittister writes about, "becoming beauty." Through that alchemical process, she revived her soul and that of the world around her.
Maya Angelou has said, “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Mom had a gift for making those she encountered feel deeply seen and genuinely loved. And not just her inner circle of family and friends, but pretty much everyone whose path crossed with hers.
For the most part, hers were not grand gestures (although she was known to make those too, at times). Instead, she filled her days with hundreds and hundreds of small gifts of self, of attention, of radical generosity. At my wedding, she pulled aside a friend I've known since childhood and who's faced a lot of adversity in her life to tell her how proud she was to see the beautiful life my friend had created for herself and that she would always think of her as another daughter. When the teenager who mowed her lawn told her he couldn't afford to go to his high school prom, she gave him money to rent a tuxedo and buy his girlfriend a corsage. When local canvassers from the local Jehovah's Witness Church knocked on her door, she listened respectfully and even gave them a small donation, despite the fact that she didn't share their beliefs. I'm pretty sure their Church, as an institution, actively rejected the faith my Mother held her whole life, but that didn't matter to her. To her, it was more important to be kind to the two earnest and soft-spoken young women standing on her doorstep.
These are just a few examples; there are so many more. Most of these stories we heard of much later or learned of by happenstance. Mom rarely mentioned them herself.
She could be playful and goofy, too. The long and the short of it is, she strove to bring joy where she could - and succeeded.
That's why so many people showed up for her funeral, including the staff at the local post office and the ladies who worked at the bakery. A neighbor who had moved far away heard through the grapevine that she had died, and flew back to attend the funeral because she wanted to honor Mom and say goodbye.
On this day ten years ago when her condition suddenly and unexpectedly began to deteriorate, my sister who was by her side reports that she started to become disoriented, and confused the beeping of the machines in the hospital with a telephone. Every time a monitor would beep, she'd put her hand to her ear as if answering the phone and say, "I love you. I love you." Over and over again. Even as her consciousness dimmed, her essence was about love. Her impulse was to make others feel loved.
Part of me is reluctant to share these thoughts and feelings. It's been ten years, and many people feel that ten years is too long to sit with grief. Their message: it's time to move on. But I've come to realize that it's not a question of moving on. Time is a raging river that rushes us ever forward, whether we want to go forward or not.
The fact is, some losses stay with you your entire life, as well they should. These losses work on us, crack open our hearts, teach us lessons that will take a lifetime to master. The wisdom that speaks to me today, at this ten-year milestone, is that the most urgent - and most daunting - lesson I can take from her life and loss is that I must begin to try to mold myself after her example. To embody beauty as she did is a difficult task but it's important to try.
Ten years ago, when I returned to my apartment in San Francisco after her funeral and listened to my voicemail, I discovered that she had left me one more message. When I pressed play, I heard, "Hi Petunia, this is Mom. I just want to let you know that I love, love, love, love, love you."
I love, love, love you too, Mumski.