eternal mother

Mom at three.i spent the last few days in the woods - at Earthsprings - same place i was last year at the same time. 0n the 26th of april, my circle of sisters in soul, marked the 1 year anniversary of my mother's crossing over ...with serious personal work on our inner selves and with a lot of laughing and playing. it was a great retreat - as they tend to be.

when i am with my spirit sisters it seems that the coldness and the aloofness of this 'unreal' world we inhabit day to day is blotted out. i feel that i am safe to be me and let go of the illusions the years have instilled in my ego-self.

i feel the warmth of the woods and the critters that live there are a deep part of me. it is as though i am truly at home when i am there.

i had no expectations and no preconceived ideas of what the weekend would bring for me in regards to my on-and-off depression.

for me it has not been a year since i lost my mama. it feels like yesterday and it also feels like it never happened at all. that she did not die.

there is a poem i recall that goes something like:

"Do not stand at my grave and weep,

I am not there, i do not sleep.

Do not sit at my grave and cry,

I am not there, i did not die..."

i don't know who wrote it. but to me it says that while the physical part of who i knew to be my mother is gone, her soul is now so joined with the universal spirit that she lives in everything.

she lives in each and every breath i take in and let out. she lives in my brother's eyes and my sister's hair. my mom lives in the sunrises and sunsets and lights up the night with her moon smile.

she fills the woods with wind and the ocean with waves. her face, once crunched in pain, now becomes a rainbow of lovely colors. the earth itself is full of her essence.

another little poem - one that mom used to read to me when i was very little - somehow feels appropriate as an honoring of her transformation. it goes like this:

"Little drops of water, little grains of sand

make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.

Thus the little minutes, humble tho' they be,

make the mighty ages of eternity."