It has been almost impossible to write since my father died three months ago.  I have been okay with losing him.  He did not suffer long and almost went out in a flash.  He was 89 and a rock star in terms of his health.  He was healthy most of his life.  No serious illnesses, no surgeries, no real problems. He had good genes.

What took my whole being and spun it into a tight, painful knot was watching my mother after he died.  It took less than three months for her to die.  She really wasn’t even close before my Dad died. She too was a rock star in terms of her internal health.

I come from good genes.  Hearty stock as they say.

The shock of losing my Dad was too much for my Mom.  She couldn’t live without him.  She didn’t know how.  It was too foreign after 67 years of being together.  That is clear.  That is what happened. She died of loneliness and shock and probably a broken heart.

I work with the effects of trauma on the body with several clients and ease them into a feeling of safety once again.  It is a gradual and tender process.  I feel a bit of the divine enter into moments of working with people regaining a sense of safety and support once that has been violated.  Seeing my Mom go through this was another thing altogether.

I now am in shock.  Watching her suffer, and the issues that happened surrounding her death were traumatic.  I am now left wondering how to heal.  Though I am somewhat of an expert helping others, I am lost with how to help my self.  Friends, colleagues, my husband help.  Time will as well but in this moment I want answers.  I want relief.  I want to feel normal again and know that it’s impossible. Too much has changed.  Too much has happened.

Five years ago when Cindy died I had a deep impulse to make her life mean something through me.  I did not know what that would look like though I knew with total and complete certainty I had to make it happen.  I created this blog and started writing about what I knew love to be.  I have spent the last several years thinking and writing about love and I have discovered so much.  I am a different person because of that inquiry and quest.

Now I feel the same impulse to make my Mom’s life and her struggle mean something through me.  I don’t know what that will look like or what form it will take.  All I know is that I must grow because of who she was and what she gave to me through her living.  I can not stay the same.  I don’t want to stay the same.

I need to dig deep and question my life.  I need to ask the question ‘why’ and search for answers.  I’m not sure if I ever really find the answers, though I need to understand things in ways that others are not interested in knowing.  In so many ways I wish I didn’t do that.  I wish I didn’t question the meaning of things as much as I do.  I think it would be easier for me.

So now I have this deep sense that there is something to discover about the meaning of my Mom’s life for me.  I am at the edge of a vast sea of darkness not knowing how to turn on a light.  Light will come,  I am certain of that.  Light will come to my heart and my soul and then I will know who she was and why she was my Mother and not yours.  I will know why I was born to her and not anyone else.

I don’t believe in chance.

There is a reason.

I will find it.