Last Friday I stood with my sisters, by my mother's side as she "let go". Her battle with cancer over. Her fate accepted.
Not so easy on this side of the spiritual plane. It hurts so much.
And in the aftermath, the need to let go of so many other things. Little hurts and burdens from years past...childhood, sisterhood, our father's death 7 years ago. All sisters having such different personalities and ways of dealing with life.
Every little thing seems huge, and then so small at the same time.
All I know is that she is gone. She is no longer in pain. And that I will long to see her face and hear her voice for the rest of my life.
In the meantime, we have to let go and go on living.
"Every little thing seems huge, and then so small at the same time." Ain't it the truth.
When does the release come, I wonder. From grief, from guilt, from resentment. Not too long ago I drove by the house where one of my high school science teachers used to live. One time he really treated me like crap in high school; I can barely remember for what now, but when I go by that house, I immediately get angry.
And that, my friends, is what they call crazy.
A spiritual director once told me, maybe we're wrong to think about forgiveness as something we do. Because so often what we discover is how totally unable we are to accomplish it.
Maybe we should think about forgiveness instead as something God does. And our job is not to make it happen, but just to try and stay out of the way so his grace can flow, however it will.
And maybe grief, guilt are the same way. Maybe the crazy thing is to think that we ourselves will ever "get over" the loss of our loved ones, or let go. Maybe the best we can do is allow that pain we feel to not curl up like armadillo but let our pain run roughshod over us for a while and see what God does with it.
That's a lot of maybes... life: a rather inexact science.
Hang in there, kmbrco.
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