After the tai chi moves,
After the sun salutation and Pilates core work
Comes the last part where the instructor speaks soothing words and the music switches from the wordless ambient swirl to The Beatles.
When I find myself in time of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And her head floats into mine – why now?
My mother’s name was Mary, but that’s not what she was called And this is not a time of trouble, in fact –
The trouble she caused me is now gone, and her own troubles too, whatever they were.
I wondered so often how her death would come, and especially when, how soon, how much longer,
And how will it feel, will there be pain?
How will it end? How will it feel? And when?
And how much of that questioning was about her, and how much about me?
When she came to live nearby at age 91, I couldn’t keep my distance anymore
At first I thought the burden would crush us both
I resented the new anxieties she added to the ones I had been cultivating all my life in the garden she helped me plant long ago.
She came to live nearby and her fears and needs came to live in my head alongside my own.
I often felt there wasn’t room.
My actions were exemplary, I flatter myself that she never noticed any flaw in the feelings behind them.
Her smile always showed the purest delight in seeing me, especially as she became less and less sure when she had seen me last.
I longed to feel that same delight, unsullied by any thoughts less worthy.
These days I pass the home where she died almost every day, and I often catch a glimpse of that smile.
The feelings it evoked have not yet distilled down to any pure essence.
But now, lying here on the mat, her other face floats before me, the one I gazed at that night and tried so hard to pay attention to, so that I would know and recognize the answer to my questions.
This is how it ends? This is how it feels?
And I still don’t know the words, only the pictures.
May 2012