Holy Spectacle

And in my dreams you’re alive and you’re crying
As your mouth moves in mine, soft and sweet
Rings of flowers ’round your eyes and I’ll love you
For the rest of your life when you’re ready…

And when we break, we’ll wait for our miracle
God is a place where some holy spectacle lies
When we break, we’ll wait for our miracle
God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life.

Jeff Mangum

My sweetest dreams are few and far between these days.  The ones where she walks into the room and asks me if I’m ready to go, and I grab my bag and jaunt off after her as if its the most natural thing in the world.  We eat leisurely lunches, we shop for things we don’t need but love and she makes me laugh.  I feel that ease, that decadent relaxed state I haven’t experienced in nearly twenty years.  Not in that same way.  The rug is back under my feet, I feel it.  Grounded.  Safe.  Warm.  The sun hasn’t split yet.

I know a little boy who is very sick.  My heart explodes when I see photos of him in his hospital bed.  And each night I ask my mother to watch him, and see him through.  Cancer is one of the darkest places I have ever been.  If it were ever to trespass into the sweetness of one of my round-cheeked boys…

She has become the one I pray to.  Maybe that seems odd.  I have a truer sense of her existence above me, however, than of any of my known deities.  She has shown herself to me so many times, tapped my shoulder gently to remind me that I am not actually motherless.  She will watch Oliver.  I know she will.  She is the eternal nurturer, and all those dear to me are her children.

I am manic lately.  I haven’t really had this type of spell before.  Each December feels a little different from the last.  This year I have packed the schedule beyond even my own upper limits.  There are many happy, busy times ahead.  They will block, obscure, distract, dampen.  They will not silence.

In 19 years I have learned a lot.  I have lived nearly half my life without her now.  But inside, my heart hangs open and raw as December 14, 1996.  There are new twists.  New moments that sting differently.  Moments she deserved to see.  If you look into me right now you would see it.  The desperate longing, the un-soothed mind.  Everything is beautiful here.  Its real.  It’s not that I don’t care.  It’s that I can’t fall apart again.  Its not that I am not afraid.  I have just lived scared for long enough to fake it really well.

Chemotherapy eats away superficial beauty, sure.  Its hell to watch someone you love endure.  But I never saw my mother more radiant than when she was bald and emaciated.  And my mother was by all accounts a gorgeous woman.  It was like there was so little covering up her heart.  It all shone through, all her goodness, all her kindness, it was pushing up and out.  Pulsing in her for all to see through the thin veil of her forsaken body.  Oliver is beautiful now.  His mother sees it.  I see it.  Its all simple and pure.  You just have to look.  Don’t avert your eyes.  Take it all in and feel it.  Its the realest thing in the world.  He is going to be ok.

I am grateful.  My loss has opened a chamber in me, a well of compassion and boundless energy to do whatever small thing I can to do help someone else facing real hardship.  I may not understand the specifics.  In Oliver’s case I can’t comprehend them.  My mind cannot process them.  But I take it in and I am present.  My perspective is firmly adjusted and I know what matters to me.  I have reason to celebrate and I know it.  So many of us do.

Hur jag saknar dig mamma . Och jag vet att det är ännu mer smärtsamt att vara dig just nu . Så nära men hittills .