I’ve just finished watching one of my favorite West Wing episodes- The Supremes.
I’m not really sure how I’m feeling at the moment. And that’s okay. I’ve had to say goodbye to loved ones and dream-choices this week. More than one of each.
When I was a teenager, my mother and I didn’t always see eye to eye on things. Heck, what teenager/parent does? I’ve stated several times that she didn’t understand me very well. But I always knew that she loved me.
I had a recent conversation with someone about love. Pain. Loyalty. The damage we inflict on each other- intentional, unintentional, well-meaning, and others. And tonight, after watching this favorite episode of mine, I am reminded so strongly of my mother.
There was a lot of confusion between her and I, and I didn’t realize until about ten years ago that most of her reactions to my approach of her for advice was out of both love for me and fear for me. I had an inkling, then, and the cause for it, and I did understand it was justified. We lived under threat for a long time. Most don’t know it and she was considered aloof by most of her co-workers. They didn’t see the shy, modest woman my mother was, and that she had the balls to walk away from money, position, power, unbelievable amounts of emotional pressure and blackmail, and a very dangerous, violent husband.
I didn’t see the fear in her until well after the divorce went through. Not the extent to which my mother felt it. Nearly two decades, actually.
I’ve had two thoughts repeatedly, since her passing. Independent of each other. And it wasn’t until after watching this episode- The Supremes, that I put together we both got something we worked for out of her death.
At the end, she turned to me one day and said, “You’re a survivor, honey. There’s nothing life can throw at you that you can’t survive and I am so proud of you.” She wanted to make sure that, no matter what happened to her, or anyone else, I would be able to go on, and she had been that way since I was a little girl.
What I got out of her passing is that she went without being completely broken by her failed marriage. I won’t go into specifics about that. Just that I made a lot of choices around that thought. She went peacefully, in her sleep, in her own room, in her own bed, surrounded by her cats, my sister, and me.
There was a lot of time that passed between her and I, where we couldn’t quite bridge that gap, though we loved each other very much. Someday, maybe, I’ll come to terms with that.
I know what she would say to me right now, knowing what I am feeling. It’s making me weep in both joy and sorrow. She went after her passion, every day. Lived it, every day, no matter that she also lived in fear every day. In so many ways, I think she’s one of the bravest people I’ve ever known. Despite our disagreements and differences in philosophy.
I had to turn around to her at one point and say that love isn’t always enough. She was trying to comfort me in a bad place that I was in, emotionally, at the time. That at least I had someone who loved me. And it wasn’t a conversation about her and I. My own long term relationship was falling apart. Telling her this cut me deeply. Cut her deeply, though I didn’t intend to cause her any pain.
Love is every where. It isn’t enough, by itself. So I am using that thought to launch myself into more. To love more deeply, more freely, more openly. Because while it isn’t enough, and it wasn’t enough to save my long term relationship, and it wasn’t enough, alone, to bridge the gap between my mother and I, and it wasn’t enough to bridge another that I have been dealing with for the past fifteen months where the timing has been just plain bad, it is there and it is a doorway to all that joy, reflection, connection, healing, wonder, and just plain awesomeness that is out there in the world.
Jana asked me recently what my next book for Ridge Lake would be about. I think… I think I have my story line figured out. The basics, anyway. I’d rather be happy than right and I’d rather leave myself open to pain than to go without love again and I’d rather be alone than to live one more day in bickering and I’d rather tell someone I love them than not. Even if the meaning of it changes on me, and more than once. I think I’ve found a good connection within me, to start writing Stew’s story.
Be happy. And if you can’t be happy, find it within yourself to seek happiness anyway. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve gotten is: “you don’t have to have a plan. All you have to do is pick up your anchor and go with it.” That, coupled with my mother’s love of every day? It is my strength.
Bless you all.