The creation of my life as death.

I had the uncanny sense of having met my mother for the first time on the morning after her death.

I noticed how I didn’t knock before entering her bedroom; there was now no need. The curtains were open as though she were greeting this morning like any other. As I sat down between her and her view of the window I became aware that I was scanning her face without knowing why. I noticed my thoughts say, ‘This is your mother free from hope and fear.’ It was as though I were being introduced to someone I had known all my life but had never met. 

It seemed I now had two mothers: one whose life had been animated by hope, need, fear, drama and emotionality; and then another, a strangely unfamiliar woman unaffected by any of these. 

For someone who had just died she seemed very much alive. It was as though death had brought her into the present; like life, death is only ever in the present. Death had brought us together in the moment.

As I stroked her face I wondered when we had last shared such intimacy. My mother looked beautiful, serene. Despite her sallow skin she had an imperceptible glow. I thought this must be what people call ‘resting in peace’, though I did not see peace; I saw an absence of the drama of life. It was as if she’d had to give up life to become present. Although my mother was gone, to me she had only just appeared.

I wondered what she would have made of this new development in our relationship …

***

I was mystified. I then became aware that I was only noticing thoughts, not feelings. As I arose I immediately felt a warm tingling tracking up through my body. My face became soft just as a welling sensation travelled from my stomach. It flushed through my chest and into my skin where it then transformed into a gentle and sudden outburst of tears. I felt immense relief as I became aware of a profound sense of aloneness.

It then struck me, who I had been in relation to my mother was also gone. I was not now an orphan, as some insist with the death of parents. I knew this because who I was had also gone. I thought, ‘Who am I without my mother?’

From the womb and into childhood my mother not only shaped my world, she was my world: food, warmth, security, care, touch, language, values and relating. The world she had brought me into was our connection to one another and it was eventually our point of separation. She had shared many stories about herself, our family, and about how I grew up. I thought I knew her, and yet now looking down at her I realised I knew only her stories, beliefs, doubts, wishes, hopes, fears and some of her secrets. None of this now seemed relevant to the woman laid beside me; her face reflected none of the world that had slipped away the night before.

I knew now that it made no sense to grieve either mother; one had only just appeared and the other never existed. Yes people grieve what they never had, and what never was, but this was not that. After all, though I didn’t know either, I now have two mothers. I realised that grieving either one, or indeed the loss of myself, made as much sense as grieving the end of the world.

***

Even though deep down I’m sure my mother knew she was dying, she had as a Christian been praying to God for a miracle to save her from death. She wanted to be delivered from death and I had wanted her to embrace it. From my perspective death is the miracle. It’s an everyday miracle that releases us from the shackles of hope and fear. 

I had wanted her to become intimate with death in life, although I had long since freed myself from any hope of this, it did not stop a small part of me wanting it and, unfortunately, even a small want can fuel a drama. As it was, neither of us got what we wanted, instead we both got something much greater.

I now saw clearly how life is a particular kind of death. This thought, this perspective, cut through me like never before. Until now only my mind could grasp this; it had taken my mother’s death for me to see that being born of death is the second and final birth.

‘Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species’

Friedrich Nietzsche

***

A memory of her drifted into mind. When I was five or six years old she took me snorkelling. We were way out of our depth. I remember holding tightly onto her hand as we looked down at the seabed. Shafts of sunlight danced among the giant fronds of seaweed as they swirled in and out to the power of an immense invisible current. Afloat in this strange new world I felt safe and awestruck. My mother’s shared sense of underwater wonder had a profound effect on me, it is something that endures to this day. 

And so here we are again, floating together in silence, sharing another new perspective, a gift so much greater than the sea.

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