My Mother Lazarus

I keep dreaming of my mum. Her being slowly comes back into her lifeless body and her eyes gently open. I'm staring at her in amazement. A miracle has occurred!
"Hi mumma" I chirp like a little girl in love.
"Hi baby" she says with such life and affection for me as she always has.
I tell her how I knew she would come back, that I knew she was coming back to visit even if she can't stay. She smiles and we laugh at the infinite possibilities we are both now fully awake to. One can die and return to their body weeks after and live in this world once again, like they never left. Magic is real!

Mumma has such a spark in her that I haven't seen for some time, even before she left her body. It's as if her body is healed and her passion for life revived. She's impatient, she wants to test out her new old body. She's been floating around disembodied for over a month now, which feels like nothing else, weightless and pure, but now back in a pain free body she is excited to play. I warn her to take it easy, it may take a little getting used to. Like when a baby begins to walk, working out their limbs and the laws of gravity. She steadily props herself up and lets her legs hang over the hospital bed. Mum smiles at me, proudly and warmly. With delicacy and precision one by one she plants her feet on the floor. Then with all the strength she can muster she stands up.

It's somewhere around here that I realise I'm dreaming and so everything that follows is not as I hoped. Mum's form changes into a young woman, then a tall man. And the being inside is different too, I realise later on. Then I remember we had mum cremated so it surely would be a miracle if she could come back to her body. All the pieces of dust and ash coming back together from the wind and soil to reform my beautiful mother, Therese. What a sight that would be. What a glorious possibility. And again I remember the conversation mum and I had before she went into the coma. Our last amazing chat.

It was her choice to leave. She didn't commit suicide or request euthanasia, she never said she wanted to die, but in our last conversation I facilitated her into knowing that her life is her own and it is her divine right to be kind to herself and put herself first. Something she had rarely done. She gave and gave and cared and cared and loved and loved. But it was foreign to her to give that gift to herself. I'm so so happy that she chose for her, the kindest and lightest choice she knew.

I wonder if we could all be kind to ourselves for a change. And choose what is most expansive and loving for our being. Even for today.

I'm learning to speak to my mum and listen for her still soft voice in ways that I haven't had to before. Even if it is in a dream for a short time that I get to see her. I'm grateful. She is my angel. My soul sister. My Mother.

R.I.P Therese Mary Burstow
20/05/1956- 19/02/2011

Sorry is not spelt F-U-C-K-Y-O-U

Grammy award winning singer/song writer Tracy Chapman, has a song that says "...words don't come easily, like sorry...". I wonder if she has a hard time with them too, or was it just referring to her lover with the impediment to back down and ask for forgiveness. I was 13 years old, sitting on my bed, Leonardo posters sprawled across my walls and my very private padlocked diary in hand listening to that song, and I felt sympathetic for Tracy. Although I had little concept of what a healthy relationship looked like, or what it was to have my heartbroken I related to her deep sadness of  "...years go by and still words don't come easily...like sorry". I imagined her lover as a handsomely rugged man (unaware at the time that Ms Chapman was gay) who drunkenly fights with her, cheats, lies and then comes back and instead of sincerely apologising charms his way back into her bed and life. And she takes him back, or in Tracy's case, her back, on some hopelessly self deprecating hope that this time her lover will change.

It's a rare thing to forgive someone in our western world. It's not a trait many of us put at the top of our list. And therefore asking for forgiveness isn't either. We don't want to back down because we don't want to be wrong. We hold onto some glimmer that we are justified. And we don't want to forgive because we don't want the message to be 'you can keep hurting me, it's ok'. Like Tracy, we may keep forgiving but be hurting our very selves in the process. And unlike her lover, can we be more willing to admit when we are hurting the ones we love, and have the bravery to say sorry?