I Remember Mama

For a long time she was absent from my life.  Her loss was symbolized by a burning hole in my heart; a bleeding, weeping, gaping wound. 

My mother died just as my peers were starting out in life.  I was supposed to be starting out too. It was a month before my college graduation when she shed her mortal coil.  Kids and their families were celebrating their accomplishments en masse, planning their lives, their moves, jobs, relationships and futures.  I organized her cremation while she was still dying of cancer in my sister’s apartment.  Everything I knew and loved was ending.  My life came to a screeching halt. 

I was alone the day of my graduation.  All my friends were with their families.  I had no one to celebrate with.  Not that I felt like celebrating.  The enormity of the ceremonies and festivities couldn’t have rubbed in anymore how alone and distraught I was.  Thousands of people were milling about in celebration while I was in despair.  It was pouring torrential rain, the sky was black.   I reflected the weather.  I was raining too.  My face and chest were wet from the precipitation pouring from storm clouds under my brows, blurring my brown eyes so that they could barely see through the downpour I was generating.   The water and my emotions were one.  I was dizzy with despair.  No one could tell.  And no one cared.  People were too busy running under their umbrellas, laughing, smiling, hugging.  Too busy planning and celebrating.  I didn’t stop raining for years. 

I lurked around my pretty college town, dressed up for I don’t know what since I didn’t go to any ceremony.  Not the big one in the morning, not the smaller one at my dorm in the afternoon where people received their diplomas.  My dorm House Masters, a very sweet older couple, knew of my distress, and my decision not to attend.  They mailed my diploma to me in a tube.

I wore the dress I wore to my high school graduation, and a new white denim Esprit jacket I bought myself as a graduation gift.  I took myself out to lunch.  There was a girl from my dorm with her dad at the restaurant.  I didn’t want them to see me.   I ate quickly and left.  I didn’t want anybody to see me. 

Mom had worked so hard to get me here.  She’d missed out on her own college graduation because she had to drop out of school to support her parents when her dad got cancer.   I went to a very prestigious school and my mother lived vicariously through me.  The ivy mystique epitomized college for her.  Perfection.  Excellence.  All I felt was anxiety, depression and sadness since she was dying for the last two of my four years.  I worked hard, I performed in comedies and musicals, I put on a stoic face.  Some people actually thought I was funny, cheerful and happy. They forgot I’m an actress.  And strong. I forged huge walls and buttresses to keep me from falling down.  Or getting close to anybody.  I felt alone, like The French Lieutenant’s Woman in her hooded cape, and I plodded along.  Mom’s impending demise was always the prize at my finish line.    

Mom pushed me to work hard and be the best, always.  She was a relentless taskmaster, to me and to herself.  I’ve since learned how important and healing it is to choose gentleness over the perpetual crack of a whip.   She paid the ultimate price for her fighting attitude toward life.  I believe it created her cancer and her death.   But it softened her, too.  It took the fight right out of her.  The cancer won and she could finally let go.  I think it was almost a relief to her after pushing so hard for so many years, a widow with two girls.  Life was a battlefield of sorts to her.  I felt closer to her in the last six months of her life than I ever had.   She was in massive pain, but she was nice.  No more criticizing.  She didn’t have to be vigilant anymore. 

Not everyone thinks that losing a parent is so bad.  In fact, I can’t tell you how sick I was of hearing “Well, nothing’s worse than losing a child.”  Fuck them, I thought, stabbed through the heart by those words. People act as if a parent’s pain is the only one that matters, the only one that’s really deep. How does anyone know I didn’t love my mother more than someone loves their kid?  Is this a competition?  There was no pain worse than this loss in my life, the second of my beloved parents to go, and I’m not submitting my suffering for comparison and review.

If an old man’s only company is his goldfish, and he loves and talks to it, when that goldfish dies, that’s the worst thing that could happen to him.   How dare anyone judge that as insignificant because it’s “just” a fish and an old man?  Anyone ever see “Harry and Tonto” with Art Carney, about an old man and his cat? 

There are parents who do not mourn when their children die.  There are parents who never parented. There are parents who kill their progeny. 

Some say, “It’s not the natural order of things!  Children are not supposed to die before their parents!”  Well, they do. Children are not supposed to be born sick and deformed.  They are.   People plain old die.  We’re given no guarantee or warranty when we’re born. There is no “supposed to” in this world.  There is only what is.  And what we do with it. 

Even though I believed in life after death, I was now two for two losing my parents.   Dad died when I was five, Mom when I was 22.   Their etheric “survival” was no comfort for me.  They were gone.  I told a therapist I was sad because “I don’t have parents.”  He argued, “Yes, you do.”  Oh, that was real psychological comfort.  I never asserted I was spontaneously generated in a petri dish.  Idiot.  So, if I have parents, jerk off, how exactly do I contact them for conversation or comfort?  I didn’t go back to him.

Grief was the backdrop for my world.  I was lost in a vortex of despair. 

My healing came through spiritual seeking.  I got channeled readings from the friend of a neighbor, one apartment away.  My neighbor was a mess herself, in her 40s, overweight, depressed, neurotic, but she was good to me.  We shared a belief in the spirit world.  When her friend Lynda came up from North Carolina looking nothing so much as Pippi Longstocking at 45, complete with freckles, red hair in pigtails, and a gap between her front teeth, this changed my life.  Lynda was in New York to shop her new psychic novel around.  She was also a channel for a spirit called Milarepa.  I didn’t know Milarepa.  I didn’t know channeling.

Channeling is when someone goes into a deep meditative state or trance and brings in high-level spiritual energies.  This is not the same as being psychic or mediumistic when any level of information (or spirit) can theoretically come through.  The purpose of a channeled session is to educate humanity on a profound level, not to predict.  It’s Sermon on the Mount time, not “should I date this guy?”  Typically the same entity or entities will come through a particular channel.   If you ask a personal question you will get a provocative answer that leads you back to yourself and your ability to choose and learn. 

Lynn, Lynda and I sat on Lynn’s bedroom floor with a tape recorder for my first session.  Lynda breathed deeply, closed her eyes, meditated and slowly toned 10-20 'om's.  Her stilling practice took 5-15 minutes.   This country hick, complete with twang, who lived on a farm and had no money, became somebody very different.  A soft energy came through and the voice was hard to hear at times. Milarepa was a Tibetan poet and saint.  Uh huh.  I didn’t care.  All I was interested in was what he had to say.

His words were poetic.  Careful.  Amazingly, this being knew me inside and out.  Lynda didn’t know me at all and Lynn didn’t know me that well, she certainly didn’t know the intricacies regarding my past, my parents, and my soul.  Milarepa knew it all.

Milarepa was gentle and loving with me, patient when I was obtuse.  He gave me meditations to do and prayers to say.  He told me it was time to let go of my mother.  What did he mean?  How could I let go of her?  She was gone.  I didn’t understand and was frustrated.  His words:

“You should now let the entity that you knew as your mother rest, for she at this juncture is weary and has some sorting out to do.  That later in your ribbon of lives, your reel of lives, like the movie screen pictures, you will once again encounter your mother and this time the roles will be switched.   She has much to learn from your high shining light, and already has benefitted greatly from your beacon.  But certain troubles that predated you were laid heavily at your doorstep, so to speak.  You had made the decision to help in this regard, prior to joining her in this particular life frame and you were not asked to bear a burden greater than the strength of your shoulders could hoist.  However; sleep is now at hand. Know that you did shine your ever bright and lovely beacon and let the weary rest.  Let your own heart rest.”

“You told me I must release my mother.  I’m not sure in what ways I’m still attached.  So what do I release?”

“Imagine that there is a subtle but strong connection of many tendrils.  Imagine the physical visualization of two beings connected by many subtle but strengthy tendrils.  Imagine that a flow of many intense emotions have been passed through these root-like tendrils.  Imagine now, friend Valerie, in your mind that one by one the tendrils do become smaller, smaller, smaller until they are like the breadth of minute threads.  Can you with me now visualize this?  Close your eyes now and feel a sweet, soft, fragrant, wafting wind blowing away gently those thread-small tendrils.  Can you feel this?  Imagine now that the soft fragrant wind filled with pink flower petals does softly blow away, one by one, each thread.  And so they melt from you like the spider webs in the sun.  Can you feel that with me?  Imagine that you now do float up a few feet into this flower petal wind, feeling my love embracing and sustaining you.  Can you feel that with me?  Now I want you to repeat this prayer:

I DO RELEASE, MOST GENTLY, MOST NATURALLY, THE THREAD-SMALL TENDRILS THAT IN THE PAST ONCE CONNECTED ME WITH MY MOTHER.  I FORGIVE HER.  I FORGIVE MYSELF.  I DO NOW RELEASE HER TO THE WIND AND WISH HER WELL.”

Well, this depressed the fuck out of me.  My love for her was being reduced to dust and detritus.  As if she wasn’t gone enough, he wanted me to diminish my attachment to the 'straws' I was grasping at.  It wasn’t possible.  I felt betrayed.  And he invited me to be reassured by his love.  Who was he?  Some dead Tibetan peace and love guy?  I didn’t know him.  I wanted my Mommy, not some meditating saint with his hair in a bun.  My attachment to her remained strong.  And, apparently, dangerous. 

I had really bad hives for decades that started after my mother’s death.  It was obviously stress related.  No doctor, no antihistamine, whether topical or internal, helped me.  I scratched so much my entire body was bloodied and swollen.  During another session I asked “How can I eliminate the itching of my skin, how can I lessen anxiety, negativity, and hatred of my body?  How can I improve my health, both mental and physical?” 

“Dear, Dear Friend Valerie,  You are not truly ailing but feeling a fierceness in the skin, in the sensory perceptors most strictly represented by the bodily touch, for it is the vessel of your skin-enclosed being.  The physical Valerie, the sensory Valerie is registering this dismay of the very skin that seeks to surround her and detain her from a heavenly escape.  This is a tricky time for you.  The sadness in the soul, the discomfort of the body, the hatred of the body all are related, and the minute itchings do now signal to you the onset of the spring season, the time of rebirth in a Valerie-season that still seeks the solitude and cold, still comfort of the winter.  But you may step into the sunshine now, Child.  You must, for your time on Earth is not nearly done, though you wish to sleep and collect the still comfort you believe of the little death, a respite from the world-weary ravages that you perceive mean physical life. 

You must now begin to see that this is a fragile time of your life, for without the insight and understanding of the physical signals you could begin to sorely manifest a more serious malady.  The ragged itchings, the niggling discomforts are but a timid tapping, a whispered warning.  I say to you now---heed it. Do not be in love with the death state, for your wish to be with your mother is like the mourning of a lost dog for his departed master, like a lover mourning a premature death of his beloved, and these feelings of deep loss place you on a dangerous precipice, flirting, unconsciously considering, the leap. 

I must tell you now Dear Friend Valerie that this loss does have a power now to suck from you the vital life force.  I must say to you now, Friend Child, that you are currently in a danger zone, that on the borderline of your consciousness you do demean your skin-enclosed self and do wish to forego the physical for a time.

I say to you at this juncture that deep inside the bosom of you there is a Force. This Force is a million-fold more strong than the negative, fainting part of you that does now seek to deceive you of its power.  The Bright Valerie Force, the Life Seeker, the Smiling Friend in your mirror is many times more strong than the negative mother-self, the temptress that bids you to sleep and shuck your bodily form.   The Bright Goddess Self, the Shining Valerie Force needs now your help, needs now your faith, for I implore you once again to get in touch with her in your mirror.  She is your Friend.    She means you highly well.  She may be seen in the shining pupil of your eye.  She may be seen in the reflection on the waters of your Eye-Soul. 

Look lovingly and long into this beautiful Soul-Eye.   Proceed into the sunlight.  Find trees.  Derive from them strength.  Do not be afraid of the Life these Sap High Friends now with you share.  Touch tendrils of new grass and rejoice.    Say to yourself these words:

I AM THE POWER VALERIE.  LIFE IS MY LOVER.  I EMBRACE IT.  I WELCOME THE SUNSHINE ON MY SKIN.  MY SKIN IS LOVELY AND SUN-WARMED.  MY BONES ARE STRONG AND ERECT.  MY FACE IS THE VISAGE OF THE DIVINE GODDESS.  I LOVE MYSELF AS I LOVE GOD’S WORLD.  MY PURPOSE IS LIFE.  I HAPPILY GIVE FORTH MY LIFE FORCE TO THE ABIDING EARTH.  AND EARTH GIVES IT FREELY BACK TO ME.

You may face the death date with a feeling that you have the right to dwell on Earth, happily, and with a freedom of motion, never frozen and afraid of the returning warmth.  Yes, meditate.  Do so in the sun.  Call to me in your prayers.  I will abide with you and I will comfort you.   Adieu”

Do you understand what a channeled reading is now?  How no garden-variety psychic could give you something that deep?   There are many compassionate and wise psychics and mediums, but true spiritual channeling is the Voice of God.  She comes in many forms, and there are many, many wonderful channelers today.  As we continue to grow as humans and merge with our Soul Selves, we will all be channeling all the time, speaking from and thinking with our Hearts.

Milarepa started out all casual in this reading, but then that warning kicked in, telling me that I was passively suicidal, and in grave danger of tumbling into greater sickness and irretrievable darkness. It made me even sadder to realize how sad I was. 

http://www.cosmicharmony.com/Av/Milarepa/Milarepa.htm

Years later I am much happier and greatly healed.  This is a testament to the beauty of the myriad spiritual teachings I have sought, and the hard, hard work I’ve done seeking joy once more.  I know now that I am a Spiritual Rock Star, a Diva, a Queen, Empress, Goddess of Love, Wine and Chocolate, Sex, Meditation, Tap Dancing, and Whimsy.  I am Sovereign.  Not raining, but Reigning now.   Long Live Me. 

©2012