Two Years and a Lifetime Ago

by Irene Daniel

Two years ago, I was burying my mother. It has been for me, the mother of all grief. And it really sent me into a tailspin. I have felt more lost in these past two years than ever before in my life. And for those who know me well, that is a pretty high bar. For I have lost my way before, with fewer resources and less self-confidence, and yet, this unsettling grief and anxiety was more than I could bear -- alone.

For I could not run away from my feelings anymore. I could not escape a past, much of which I had simply blotted out for most of my adult life. There was nowhere left to run. This was home. This was my mom. My alpha and omega. My first love, my first friend. My caretaker, teacher and protector. She was also my jailer and tormentor in ways that haunt me still. And it is this truth with which I am now able to make peace.

Now I realize how very ill my mother was all of her life. And in so doing, I acknowledge my own dis-ease with life, and how mental illness has affected my entire family and my entire life. I can see now how she was afraid of her own craziness, and that is why she kept people at bay; even her own children, even her sisters, who I know she dearly loved.

And I know now how she felt because that is what I have done. And for the same reasons, albeit mostly subliminally. Stuffing all that darkness and insanity away for years and decades and generations has made me very, very ill. So ill that I needed medication, as well as therapy, in order to render me even semi-functional these past long months. I needed a lot of help to come face to face with me.

Last year it seemed that I could do nothing. I could not focus or complete even the most simple administrative duties for which I was responsible. I could not remember anything. It seemed that all I could do was cry. And write. Even reading, which is like breathing to me, was often difficult. But I could write. And cry. And cry and write.

Much of my writing, especially my journaling, is and will remain unpublished. This writing was just for me to figure out -- finally -- all the crap and emotions that I needed to unpack and sort out. As well you might imagine, I am not done. And I will never be done, but I am better now. And it is time to live again. Time to remember that fortune favors the bold.

It's as though my fields of productivity have now lain fallow long enough, and it is time to move on to the next chapter of my life -- my life as an author, dog-owner, wife, mother and grandmother. And I know that it is also time to stop running away from my mental dis-ease, and to start to live -- really live.

As I write this, I wonder how much was left unfulfilled in my grandmother, who committed suicide at the age of 52. I know that there was much unfulfilled in my mom. I know how afraid she was of everything and everyone. She trusted no one. At the very end, she trusted me because she knew she had to finally surrender, and allow herself to be vulnerable, and to be taken care of by another. This surrender was so difficult for her because she did not know how to let others into her soul.

And now they are in my dreams, my mother and my grandmother, and in my consciousness. They tell me that I must live now. They didn't get to go to college, much less law school. And I realize what a dis it would to them to squander my talent and my gifts, or to allow myself to isolate in depression and anxiety as they did. Two generations of our family's women is enough of a sacrifice. I am left to claim the prize of a life lived unafraid and unashamed.

Although this dormant period in my life is now coming to an end, I do not lament or regret it at all. I have learned more about myself and what I genuinely feel about everything without the need to hide myself, or my feelings, away.  I also learned that I really enjoy being a housewife and focusing primarily on taking care of my home and family. Who knew?

I've heard it said that, before enlightenment, we chop wood and haul water; and after enlightenment, we chop wood and haul water. I have experienced the naked joy and freedom of chopping wood and hauling water, figuratively speaking, and realizing the sacred in the ordinary. My fallow fields are now ready to plow and reap and sow.

And the most important lesson learned was that I am not alone. I have never been alone and will never be alone. I remember how strange, and yet very soothing, it felt to have my childhood friends around me to help me bury my mother. It felt strange because I had become estranged from everything that reminded of my childhood, with all of its trauma and devastating disappointments. I didn't really stay in touch with anybody because I hadn't really been there with them in the first place when we were in school together. But small towns are always family and my former classmates carried her coffin with me. Traffic was stopped on Main Street, where my mother walked nearly every day. In my home town, I am always home. I didn't really know that two years and a month ago. But I know it now. And I will never forget, or regret, where I came from.

And it is some of those same friends and other friends I have made along the way, as well as dozens of new ones, that sustain me now. Social media has allowed me to reconnect and to once again laugh, and sometimes fight, with my old friends. And it is comforting, not frightening, this time.

I don't know anymore if I'm a loner because I'm just made that way, or because I'm just too afraid to let anyone get too close. I surmise it's a bit of both. But life was meant to shared and negotiated with others. A full life cannot be lived any other way. And I want a full life.

I am a perennial learner. My curiosity knows no bounds. Now I want to learn to love people in the same manner that I love to learn; to be curious about them and to never stop discovering them. For in so doing, I discover and re-discover myself.

That sounds like a journey worth taking, doesn't it?


                                                                                              Irene Daniel   Copyright 2014   All rights reserved.