Hope and Mother's Day 2023

Hope. When there is everything, and nothing, there is still hope.

A long time ago there was a girl who was afraid. Of all of the things she was this one thing dominated. It was what propelled her, crippled her, and reminded her. It was the beast she lay victim to for all of the days. It was the affliction her mother had and her mother before her. It was everything and nothing. It was, and it was what she let it be.

It was like this for a very long time. A lifetime, and then, a lifetime more.

It took a long time to recognize the part of her she didn’t have to be. She knew that there had to be more to this journey. The one she woke up to everyday to repeat the whole pattern again. But when you carry a beast so big, and so heavy, it is hard to raise your eyes above it. Maybe fear is the antidote to hope, she thought. And, maybe hope was the cure for her fear? And with that it began; the daily ritual of pulling her bootstraps up and raising her chin above the horizon, just to see if maybe out there somewhere there was another option to her fear. Maybe there was a place she could leave it? Just to rest its weary head for a while. Maybe, it was as tired of her as she was of it? Maybe, they could exist without each other? The shell without the cortex. The cure without the disease. Maybe, if she could grow big enough and strong enough, she could outgrow its need for her, and with all things that persist long enough, her need for it? Maybe? Just maybe?

What happens is that time works its magic on you and you grow comfortable with even the most horrible. You get used to each other to a degree that makes it hard to coexist without each other, even when the other half is a cancer. A bad marriage arranged on the most horrific of terms. Life is like that. It will kill you if you let it. Leach you to anemia just to see what the reserve tank has in it. Medicine, the art of molecular life in the grips of another life, the host with its many moving parts all required to work in tandem even when they have opposing agendas, is also just like this. A dance, a tango set to a music you cannot always chose. You try to lead but you know the tempo might change and there may be feet stepped on as you tip-toe across the floor.

Isn’t life like this for all of us? The calculations of actions you make silently within to try to make it through life with as little turmoil, pain, and scarring as possible. At what point do we learn that if you don’t have one side of the coin it's impossible to know the other. Maybe with age there is wisdom and the ability to excise the fear so you can live with just the hope?

Today is Mother’s Day. The day that we all celebrate the origin of our existence on the double X chromosome in our own DNA. For me, May 14 is the day my mother died. On this day at 4:14 pm in a little stone house not too far from my own, my mom was given her last breath. I say this as it marks a date, impermeable, and in-excisable that is the pivot point to which the calendar resets, and a life without another starts. It is that day changed so much within me. There is a book to write about her, and her impact upon me. A book that sits waiting for the time and the distance to write it without it eating me up. Consuming me like the fear that swallowed her and kept her trapped within.

Today I remind myself that there is life after another life passes on. I cannot call her life gone. She is never gone. She is here all around me reminding me to always have hope. To always see the beauty and the joy in the life that exists even if you have a difficult time seeing through the tears. Today I talk about hope.

This morning I opened my eyes before the sun came up. The sky crept from black to the darkest of blue. A grey-washed out kind of blue. Smeared in its blurry shadows. Quiet, heavy, and slumbered with a fog that keeps all of the earth’s tiny souls safe in their beds. The first rays of sunshine wake up the world and to this awakening the first chirp can be heard. It is my time to be alone and feel as if the world will remind me that I am never really solitary. One little chirp. Just a call in the almost-darkness to awaken the rest. I turn on my Merlin app, and start to record. I now know that this tiny rooster call is an American Robin. Maybe being afraid, and trying to replace it with hope is about seeing the bravery in the darkest of places and still singing?

here's this mornings first recording; (and try the Merlin app. You can listen and identify all of the birds. It's amazing, and you will part of something that is alive around you that you never felt before. And maybe it can help us all remember that we are all mothers to each other?). 

I made a video the other week about all of the clients I see who come to me having to lay their pet to rest after disease, and age, and all of the many afflictions that life can wear you down from. They always ask me the same thing, without fail; they ask, “this must be the hardest thing that you have to do as a veterinarian?” And I always reply the same way… “No. You loved your pet so much that you made them a part of your family. They were loved every moment of their lives. How lucky they are for that, and I know they are so grateful to have been yours.” That is the hope in the face of fear. That is the beauty in the face of death. Maybe losing someone you love is about remembering the hope they brought you everyday you were together?

With hope springs gratitude eternal. Is there anything we wouldn’t give for that?

Happy Mothers Day to you all. (regardless of what your chromosomes or current children roster looks like)..

 

And P.S. go out and foster, adopt, and live life with someone else… pets count as kids these days,, so we are all moms here. Maybe there is life outside of the one you are living right now where hope springs eternal? And, maybe its time to go look for it? Let’s all look for hope in the love that reminds us we are all mothers.

More on my mom here.

The Ross House. My Mom's Decorating and The Things She Treasured.

The First Christmas Without My Mom.

The Sensuous Bean.

And to identify the songs in your back yard; Merlin app information here.