Dear Hearts,
What is life without mind?
What does mind have to do with quality of life?
These are my inquiries of the past few days. I share them as I look toward our circle,
girded up by the daily lessons of A Course In Miracles, lifted by gratitude for the experience
that comes to dip my heart in immortality.
all love,
marybeth
My Mother, Mary: Walking Out of this Life into Eternity.
My mother, Mary is happy. A part of her mind recognizes she is blessed, her needs met despite the challenges of a weakened body, despite the nuisance of disappearing thoughts. That part of her mind is like a magnificent moth-eaten dress. Memories, words, ways of relating have vanished. The dress is hard to wear now. There are more holes than threads.
Who is my mother, Mary, without the story of her life? She feels friendless because friends are forgotten. She feels afraid; what was once familiar is now alien. She feels ignorant. Cooking, cleaning, driving, accomplishing so many creative things used to be easy. Now she says, I’m old and stupid. She has forgotten how to live. Perhaps more troubling, she has forgotten herself.
We all have a narrative for our lives, a kind of puzzle sewn together from many pieces of learning. We are our story, woven into identity by beliefs, a developing idea of somebody-ness. In conversation with our inner parts, we live the thought of “I am” extending in the world.
Self-concept creates life experience; ways of relating to God, the planet and to others. How do I relate when my memory no longer exists? Who do I talk to, when me is gone? Who does the talking?
When diseased mind begins to gnaw out pieces of the puzzle, feelings of meaninglessness, of nobody-ness, of empty space take their place. Ego rushes to fill the void with nonsense, because silence without a listener is frightening.
I am watching intently. I think Mary, my mother, her person, is coming undone from her personhood. She feels lost, disoriented. Some days, no one is at home inside. After all the years of Mary-ness, the absence feels lonely for us both.
Still, she has not lost love or her capacity to express feelings of care and devotion. Love is not diminished but increased and transposed. It is no longer what she can do for us, or even what she can say. Love is the light that shines through the shadow across her eyes. Love is the smile and laughter that spontaneously bursts forth when she is in my presence. Mostly, love is gratitude, abundant and spilling over. I marvel at her gratefulness.
Little things have become important now. Things that seemed silly or normal before, have become banners of love; getting out of bed, getting cleaned up for a visit, waking earlier than noon to share a breakfast. Love surpasses the depression, fatigue and flatness of her mind. Love stirs to action.
What I may have judged as boring or trifle in the past, is now monumental.
I ask my mother, what does a good day look like now? What would make the end of life worth living? I see how age itself simplifies choice, uncomplicates our decision for happiness. We no longer need things. Mom began giving her possessions away to friends and strangers decades ago. At first it was food in the refrigerator for the people maintaining the buildings. Later, it was money and clothes and household items. One day my sister and I realized Mom had given most of her jewelry to acquaintances, to children, to the cleaning lady. She said she didn’t figure she’d be going out up-style any time soon.
Good days, days that have “quality,” are radically unsophisticated. Having the energy to rise from bed, managing a shower, eating ice cream. A best day includes visits and phone calls. Those who love her work at maintaining presence and attention. Mom asks, what’s new, what’s new, what’s new, what’s new, more times than I can number. I search deep to respond creatively. Perhaps I am trying to fill her holes with bits of myself. The rest of our conversation is heart speak, the words insignificant. The gazes matter most.
This morning my ACIM lesson aims at helping me remember we are as God created us. How did
God create Mary, my mother, my sister, the nursing aides, me? I am moved to awe by the kindness, the courage, the loving generosity of each one. I am moved by what I know is Christ’s ministry in the midst of mind-disease. But there is more. There is some one behind the cadre of Mary’s frailty. She dances with my soul.
I look in with the Eye of Spirit. God appears through the forms. Love is unstoppable, its effects indestructible. Intimacy does not require small self. There is some other within that receives and gives. There is One, a Communicator, which shares the ineffable. There is the feel and beam of the Lover.
Humanity is our terrible, wonderful estate. Divine and fragile, spirit and flesh, a dream from the certainty of Truth. We are magnificent, crazy, pained, and joyous. We are the home through which God expresses in uniquely beautiful ways. Through us, with us and as us, even in dying, God-Life reveals Its holiness, the trembling, sweet experience of Relationship, the splendor of the Love our hearts truly Desire. This is the zenith Quality which never forgets Us, the everlasting Mind of my mother, and all beings, remembering for us as we walk out of this life, into eternity.
Copyright Sept 19 2019 marybethscalice