Breaking Free

Sometimes the elements of your life present themselves in a way that provides remarkable clarity… if you’re paying attention.

Since I have been “single” (separated really, not divorced but legal in its definition or so I’m told) I have had many moments like that; where because I am paying closer attention, I see things that were invisible or at lease well disguised to me previously.

When I separated, everyone told me the first year would be the hardest… the first birthdays, holidays, anniversaries… all of these spent for the first time alone would be the hardest. Well, in my humble opinion those people lied (not maliciously... just naively). Or at least set up a false expectation of relief that has not yet come.

Having said that, I can tell you that the way I define my special occasions now has certainly changed. But still, there are times that are more difficult than others because of the cluster of events. May and June are right up there. May has mother’s day, my parents’ anniversary and is the month my father died and June has father’s day, my wedding anniversary and the day my mother died (how about that for irony?).

I have crystal clear recollections of when I was growing up, sitting in my bed at night calculating how old I would be at the turn of the century (thinking it was such a far way off). I knew I would be 37… I was also certain, with absolute surety, that I would be dead by 40. For no particular reason. I just knew I would be gone from this earth by then. No shock. No sadness.

In my work at the Women’s Centre I learned that this is a common thought of people who have survived a difficult childhood. There is a feeling that they will die young and there is no sadness, remorse or regret in it. It is a statement of fact and requires no empathy or support.

As I celebrated the new millennium with my family and friends I gave this memory a passing thought but didn’t dwell on it. Until one night in June of 2000.

My family and I had been away for a few days and when we returned we found a series of telephone messages for me. In increasing severity and urgency I was being told that my mother was not well and was admitted to the hospital in the town where I grew up and she still resided. And it seemed she would not survive the night. Get there soon, I was told.

So I left my home and ventured out for what was one of the most remarkable drives of my life. As I drove the highway to my old home town, the sky in front of me was being lit with flashes of lightening behind mountains of clouds in the distance. I was acutely aware that I was driving into a storm in every possible sense.

When I arrived at the hospital, my sister was there with my mother and for the course of the night my sister and I sat by her bedside and talked about nothing at all. Our relationship, my sister and mine, had always been strained at best and this was not the best of circumstances.

My sister had been at the hospital for much longer than I when, in the middle of the night she said she needed to lay down and rest a while. Off she went to a room designated specifically for family members needing rest, leaving me alone in this sterile environment with the woman I called Mom. During this quiet time, with only my mother and me in the hospital room, I saw her for who she was... just a woman relaxing into her longest of sleeps. She wasn't my mother, just a woman who had lived her life and was about to depart this earth in the most peaceful of ways. I talked to her some of the time, sat and watched her for some of the time, walked around the room a bit and just waited.

In the middle of the night, our mother passed with both of us in the room. I was inches from her face, talking to her as I heard her draw her last breath, looked up at my sister as she was in the middle of a conversation with the attending nurse and announced that she was gone. I didn’t need the nurse to confirm what I already knew.

After the required conversations and meetings that we had with hospital staff, in the small hours of the morning, I headed back on the journey to my home. And I was driving into a bright, beautiful sunrise. I had come out of the storm and was facing a new day.

And what I knew then and there was that it wasn’t me that was going to part this earth before I was 40… it was the frightened, insecure, person that had lived inside of me all those years. I had said good bye to her and my mother in the same quiet breath.

My mother was free and so was I.