Flying From The Wings of Angels

During my great adventure in August, I set my mind toward forgiving my mother.  It has been one of the hardest things I have been asked to do.  Spirit and Angels have never misguided me, so when they whispered to me “It is time to forgive your mother,” I didn’t question them.  I had no clue as to how I was going to do it, but I had known for some time now it was a bridge I was going to have to cross and no one could cross with me.  This was something I had to do alone here on earth, but my Angels have been wrapping me in white light.  During the wrenching process, they have covered me when I couldn’t float upon my tears and held me safe within their wings when the fear was sending me to the dark corners of my childhood.  I am safe.  I am at peace, and I am ready for the next step.

I started to sense urgency in August, like time was running out.  I no longer feel the urgency because I have done what was asked of me.  I have not fully resolved the forgiveness process, but I am not angry, I am not blaming her anymore, I do not feel pain and guilt for a burden that was never mine to bear, and I have emerged from a period of depression and intense reflection.  I did not emerge as a Phoenix from the ashes, it wounded me but I am far stronger than I give myself credit for.  Instead, I emerged a rabbit.  Not skittish, but in recognition of my own humility.  Being a rabbit is not so bad.  Dealing with the issues I had with my mother got my fur up, but the fur is soft, warm and fluffy.  I have accepted the person my mother was and is (again) but I am not at the point where I can hope or think of a real future with a relationship with her.  I dare not hope.

I am almost through the grieving process in relation to my mother.  I grieved for the mother I wanted, the mother I needed and the mother I deserved.  So much anger was tarnishing my happiness, and I could not understand the extent it was affecting my life and the relationship I had and wanted with my own daughters.  I saw some clues which led to why I knew I had to put some distance between me and my girls.  At this point, the dynamic between my mother and I was now crippling my growth and threatened to burden my children with the aftermath of heinous acts begun at least two generations before they were born.  I want more for them.  They deserve everything I have to give. 

The mother I grieved for died before I was even born.  My mother died somewhere in the atrocities my grandfather gave her to bear.  My mother was so badly damaged by the alcoholism and sexual assaults that she did not survive.  My grandfather murdered my mother as surely as if he had ended her life.  It is about time I gave him credit for it.  Justice and judgments, however, are not in my hands.  That is for Spirit to handle.  I’m sure Spirit dealt justice far greater than I can imagine.  I can take comfort in knowing my Grandfather paid dearly for his sins, though I do not know the extent of his suffering.  I will never know the person my mother might have been had she not been exposed to such fear, abject terror and helplessness.  I only know my mother is dead, and the woman in her body lacked the capacity to be the loving woman she was meant to be.  I do know the mother who raised me loved me.  Because she loved me, she had to suffer grief as well.  When you love someone, you want to be in their life, even if only a tiny fraction of it.  I have denied this to my mother as I worked on breaking the cycle of perversion which brought us to this place.  There wasn’t any other way.  I emerged from my childhood every bit as broken and fractured as she did.  I was too fragile, and I needed distance to gain clarity.  For the pain I caused my mother, I am sorry.  I did nothing wrong, but I love my mother enough to feel sorrow this was the life we had to lead.  We both deserved better. 

I cannot begin to know how my father justified crawling into my bed, but I am certain on some level he knew what he was doing was inherently wrong.  It’s called a conscious and though my father drowned his in alcohol, his conscious was very busy every time he hurt me.  It was a vicious cycle; the alcohol freed him from any social taboos to commit incest with his own daughter.  When he finally heard his conscious, he had to drown out the sound of his own shame.  And so it went.  I do know what my father did to me was premeditated, it was deliberate, and it was intentional.  Sexual predators know their actions are wrong, and they don’t care.  They turn a blind eye to the suffering and harm they inflict so they can continue to service their own selfishness. 

I know the mother who raised me loves me; I have known it all along even through the anger, through the pain, through the outrage.  I had to reach an emotional maturity before I could accept she loved me.  For most of my early life I did not feel worthy to be loved by anyone.  A loving person does not do the things to me my mother did.  I had to tread through the fires of hell in order to reconcile the pain she inflicted upon an adorable, curly headed little girl named Charlie could also exist in a woman who loved her daughter.  I had to recognize and begin to heal my pain before I could feel empathy for hers.  The pain and hardship my mother inflicted upon me was not premeditated.  Her tsunami rages toward me were not intentional.  And my mother did not deliberately intend to shatter what was left of my soul once my father was done.  My mother parented as she was taught to live.  She made mistakes as we all do, but she raised me with the knowledge she had.

I held her accountable for acts of malice.  If she was malicious in her parenting of me, it was because someone had to pay for what was done to her.  Someone had to be punished and she was helpless to punish the men who murdered her.  As people often do when they cannot exact justice from those who harmed them, she looked for a weaker being to bear her wrath.  I just happened to be handy.  It is the “kick the cat” syndrome magnified by the servitude worthlessness of women when depending upon men to love them.  Like me, my mother simply wanted someone to love her. 

As I do every year, I reflect at Thanksgiving on what I have to be thankful for.  I am humbled by all the gifts I have had in my life.  Spirit and Angels knew my journey could extinguish my soul, but even when I was desolate I was never alone.  I was never without their protection, love and interventions to nurture my shattered soul.  The gifts I have received in my life, whether tangible, loving or spiritual have destroyed what evil entered and attacked my life.  I have spent this week being a rabbit humbled by the generosity of the universe.  Angels rarely introduce themselves to their charges, and most charges only get one Angel, but I had an army of them and they wanted me to know I was under their care.  Deep gratitude results in humility.  I am deeply grateful for what I have learned, the people who loved me despite myself, for my daughters, and for the opportunity to develop my soul.  I am deeply grateful for every gift I have been given.  It is hard to indulge in self-pity for the suffering I have endured most of my life when I acknowledge the infinite gifts placed in this same life.   

As I acknowledged the enormity of what I have been given, as I accepted my own humility, I realized what was expected of me.  Just as I felt a duty to care for my father with kindness as he was slipping into the dark, I also feel a duty to my mother.  But what I feel is more than the institutional duty of kindness I gave to my father, a man whose harm to me was perpetrated in malice.   It is time for me to do more than write pretty words about forgiveness and stand in a call for action.  It is time for me to live as I believe, to live in some small measure the grace and beauty Spirit has shown to me all my life.  My mother is not innocent, but she has paid for the harm she has inflicted upon others.  She has paid for her mistakes, as we all will.  My mother and I have both paid dearly for the sins and evil of others.  Life is often unfair, but Spirit is never unjust. 

So it is with the love of the heavens, the grace and beauty of my Angels, and the humility of a rabbit I put into motion the next step.  I believe my mother is dying.  As a nurse, you get a sense of impending death.  But it is not the sense of a nurse I believe my mother to be dying; it is from the whispers of Angels as they instruct me to give my mother a very tiny piece of what Spirit has given me.  I cannot end my mother’s lifelong suffering, nor can I mitigate or ease her pain.  I know my pain, and it endures despite every attempt I have made to resolve it.  My pain does not permeate and decay my life as it once did, but I cannot deny I carry it with me.  I have been face to face with the power of complete, consuming and irrefutable love so great, one universe cannot contain it.  I have been in the presence of overwhelming acceptance.  I have been forgiven before I ever did harm.  I was loved beyond measure when I only knew venom.  I must offer my mother what Spirit gave me without reservation and without any expectations.  My mother deserves to be at peace in her last moments of time here on earth, she deserves to be with someone who can ease her fear as she transitions back to Spirit, and she deserves to be loved, even if she cannot accept she is loved.  I want these things for her. 

Oddly enough, I rented a two bedroom apartment to accommodate visits from my friends and family.  It has been a hardship to pay the difference between a one bedroom and two, but I wanted my children to know this is their home as well, regardless of where life may take them.  My plans for my life here and all the preparations for those plans were nucleated.  Nothing in my life at present is representative of the life I planned and expected.  Spirit is so much wiser than I am, because Spirit envisioned a much better life for me than I could envision for myself.  The job at Citi will not increase my back pain, nor will it significantly increase the neuropathy and pain in my neck, shoulder and arm.  Since I have health care benefits now, it is my expectation my pain will be managed so it no longer dictates what I am able to do in the course of my day.  I will be able to be healthy, and not worry which utility will have to wait because I need my medication. 

Citi is a wonderful place for me to work in so many ways, but as I was looking over all the benefits they offer to their employees, one thing stood out like a rose amongst the ivy.  Citi offers a modest benefit for elder care.  It is a supportive benefit designed to assist the employee to access services they may need as they care for an aging parent.  Citi also offers a limited consultation service to help navigate through the Medicare/Medicaid system.  I thought “Mom needs to move here.”  But I had not spoken to my mother since that initial conversation.  I meant to call her and then something happened with my phone, erasing her number.  I had to wait for her to call me again so I could have her number.  I wasn’t concerned, though.  If my mother never called me again, I was fine with it.  If she did call me again, I have to draw from the same source of strength, grace and acceptance I used with my father.  Today she called to wish me a Happy Thanksgiving and she also wanted me to tell her grand –daughters “Grandma McDonald wishes them a Happy Thanksgiving.”  She is making an effort to be in our lives.  I will meet her halfway, and we will walk the rest of the path together.

My life is a series of insignificant moments interspersed with undeniable truths.  Sometimes those truths come in a rather remarkable way.  Life is like that, you have to pay attention!  I felt badly about getting into a pissing contest with my mother, knowing what her emotional level is.  She sucked me in so quick all I could do was to watch myself wreck the train.  I have been so focused on my 2 new jobs, my failure when speaking with my mom was put in the reserve area of my brain.  I didn’t discard it; I need to be aware of how I communicate with her so I do not cause her any additional heartache.  I didn’t think I would really have use of it in the future, though.

Well, as it happens, there is a woman in my training classes at Citi who always has to argue a counterpoint.  She also revels in bragging about her exploits.  The first day, we each had to write down three statements about ourselves on a piece of paper.  Two of those statements were true; we had to guess the lie.  Her statements were: I have a heart condition, I wrote a book and I worked for the CIA.  Of course, everyone immediately wanted to know if she was ok, she is a few years older than I am.  Everyone thought the CIA was a lie (I remain skeptical.)   No, the heart condition was the lie.  She was vague about her position with the CIA, stating “If I told you, I would have to kill you.”  I know, right?  She revels in drawing attention to herself, something I noted I am happy I don’t have to do to anymore to feel as if I exist.  I did not realize the significance at the time, but none of my statements involved a word about my writing, the book or the commercialized blog site.  Furthermore, when she went on bragging about the book she has written (unpublished, she is looking for a publisher,) I STILL DID NOT SAY A WORD ABOUT MY WRITING!  I tucked that away in the hmmm, interesting part of my brain.  This woman clearly annoys the hell out of me, yet I didn’t call her on the CIA, I did not try to diminish her statements with my own.  I simply did not engage her.  (I thought CIA was trained to blend in and NOT draw attention to ones self.  If it is true, I can see why she no longer works there. She's nuts!)

What a remarkable thing to do!  I am finally gaining confidence in my own abilities; I do not need to broadcast them to anyone within a hundred mile radius!  That was a huge leap for me to take. I smiled to myself, knowing I was far more talented than she bragged about.  Other than my personal achievement, I did not understand the importance of this seemingly insignificant moment.  I would come to understand it today and of course the annoying woman drove it home. 

I have been polite and pleasant to her, but she is like a mosquito.  I would rather not hear her buzzing in my ear, but I can’t seem to slap her away, either!  Believe me; the thought of slapping her is very tempting.  Not a day goes by she doesn’t reveal another unusual and colorful experience she has had.  She displays her vast wealth of knowledge tirelessly.  I would have been bored to death if I didn’t have ADHD.  Lots of other things caught my attention.  Like me, she has to work two jobs.  I find it ironic her second job is as an apartment property manager!  Spirit loves to mess with my head!  Spirit does have quite a sense of humor.  Every day I listen to her stories, and while we share some commonalities, I never question her authority.  Her knowledge is absolute!  I just smile to myself, enjoying my private little joke as I watch her display more ignorance than knowledge.  No one else in the class can make a statement without her knowing more about it.  Doesn’t seem to matter what the topic is. 

Today we talked a little about body language in class.  I had my arms crossed, leaning back in the comfy office chair.  Philip, the class instructor, talked about it being a sign of aggression according to the textbook, but it doesn’t always have that meaning in life.  I said I was comfy, (meaning also I was bored) but sometimes I cross my arms like that when I am cold, then I did the little gangsta arms crossed pose.  Everyone laughed.  Guess who jumps in to inform the class, (particularly me,) how she knows all about body language and what it means because she used to work as a psych tech!  I didn’t let on, but I was rolling on the floor laughing!  She then went into great depth about how she had to subdue the psychotic patient.  She also educated us on how split personalities and schizophrenia was basically the same thing. You cannot imagine how tempted I was to say “Uh, yeah.  One of my disciplines in nursing is in Psych and I worked for the Cleveland Clinic.  I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know.”  I was more amused knowing I could run circles around her.  I had a verbal fly swatter at hand, but I didn’t swat the mosquito away.  I found my silence amusing.  I wonder if it is a bad sign to frequently amuse yourself?  I hope not, because I am quite good at it.

Just as all the pieces and details I needed to move across the country fell into place effortlessly, the opportunity for my mother to move here to spend what time she has left with me is also occurring with very little real effort on my part.  I have the room for her.  Citi has not only provided support for this in my benefit package, it offered me the opportunity via mosquito to be tested on what I learned.  I am not less than anyone.  I have nothing to prove, and no one to impress.  I am a rabbit. 

So I will leave a message today for my mother (she indicated she would not be home today) wishing her a Happy Thanksgiving and extend the invitation.  I am putting the future of our relationship in her hands.  If she declines, I will be sad for her spirit; it lost an opportunity to grow, heal and transform.  Since I dare not hope for my original mom to make an appearance, I hold no reservation should she decline.  My life is too busy to ride the merry go round of dysfunction.  I hate the canned music on those things, anyway.  Should she decide to accept, I guess I will have to come up with some furniture…quickly!  Somehow, I think my mother might like to sit on a couch in the living room and watch TV before retiring to her room, nestling in her bed and falling asleep.  I am content with my cave and an air mattress.  Furniture will be provided should the need arise.  If she accepts, I know there will be adjustments.  I could be kind to my father because I kept a safe distance from him.    My father presented a real threat to me.  Because my mother did not act with intent, I will need to find a way to hold onto what I have learned, and be able to apply it.  I will not have the luxury of time and distance to retreat within myself.

I can hear everyone screaming “Are you out of your flipping mind?”  Nope.  Just as I knew I had to come to Arizona, I know this is right.  I need to make the effort to be the type of person Spirit and my Angels taught me to be.  They have surrounded me my entire life; it is time I stepped away from their loving shelter to see if I can fly on my own.  I will face challenges.  Sometimes I will meet those challenges, sometimes I will exceed expectations, and sometimes I will crash and burn.  When that happens, I will fly back to the warmth of my Angels until I feel I can try again.  I am too damn stubborn to give up on anything.  Of course, I know there is a lot at stake here.  On one hand, my mother and I will part in peace, having come to a truce, even maybe an understanding.  She will transition back to Spirit and I will see what adventure Spirit leads me to next.  The potential for disaster has Bank of America written all over it.  I am not going into this with my eyes wide shut.  If disaster rears its vile head, I will remind myself my mother deserves the love she has been denied most of her life.  This is not about me; with a little help from my friends I can enter crazy land for this time period.  Hopefully since my last visit, crazy land will have closed the more bizarre attractions.  I can stand in front of the circus mirror and deny the reflection is truth.  In the end, I will know I treated my mother with the love, dignity and respect she deserves.  I know I can give her at least what I gave my father.  My mother deserves a better effort than that, and I am determined to see she gets it.  Spirit has entrusted me with these gifts for a reason.  It’s time I grew up and put them to good use. 

Now I just need to breathe and make the call.  After that, it is out of my hands.