Monday, July 2, 2012

Memory & Mourning

Lately I have been finding myself often in a place of memory and mourning.  I have been in mourning for my mother for eight months, but as my heart is adjusting to the reality of her death, my mind is wandering towards other losses, ones that I am beginning to think were never properly mourned.  I have always understood and paid attention to the big losses, like death or the loss of my marriage.  I knew that these things needed to be mourned.  I have spent much of my adult life working through childhood experiences and have mourned losses that lived there as well.

These losses seem smaller, less life changing.  And yet, when I think of them, I find myself weeping.

A promise, made when I was 19, to a dear old man, that I was never able to keep.

A sudden realization, a sharp recognition of a "could-have-been" that left me doubled over in pain and regret.  I generally try to ignore "could-have-beens", but this one held a loss so great, it insisted on being mourned.

The soft look of love, lost, not because of death of the person, but because of death of love within the person. 

Beside these losses, the loss of my mother feels so...clean.  So normal.  I look at her picture and know that I will never, on this earth, see her face or hear her voice again. She was here and now she's not and the entire loss is wrapped in love and affection and holding her hand and telling her that it was okay to want to let go and her asking me, repeatedly, if I needed money, if I was okay, if I had what I needed. 

These other losses leave me stunned.  Broken. And then, I am left with a choice.  I can choose to see them, address them, mourn them, and let them go.  Or I can push them back into whatever heart-crevice they were hiding in and ignore them. Again.

So, I choose to mourn them.  It helps that I am kind of in mourning mode, anyway. Why stop now?  Who knows what God has planned for the space in my life that these things have occupied? 

One thing I am grateful for.  I am so glad that God has been teaching me about letting go.   It feels good to release these things into His hands.  I cannot change the past.  I cannot recoup my losses or make it all better. 

There is an awesome passage in the book of Joel - Joel 2:24 - 26


 “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten —
the great locust and the young locust,
the other locusts and the locust swarm—
my great army that I sent among you.
You will have plenty to eat, until you are full,
and you will praise the name of the Lord your God,
who has worked wonders for you;
never again will my people be shamed. "

I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten...I love that. 

Peace out.

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