#10

A Tribute to my Mama!

20 years. So long, so short, suddenly timeless. It was a day after the New Year rang in when I walked along a hospital hallway in Wuerzburg/ Germany, shortly after visiting hours. A nurse stopped me:” Excuse me, where are you heading?”. “I am here to see my mother. She is in room X.” “You know she died 10 minutes ago?!”

That’s how it went down. From a phone call from my cousin (while changing Ryans diaper), which was more like a heads up to prepare myself that anything can be possible, my Mama can be passing in 5 hours or 2 weeks. I dropped everything I did, arranged what needed to be arranged for the 3 month old baby and made my way to her side in what seemed to have been the night with the most rain I have ever witnessed. It was already dark out. The roads were covered in water. The Autobahn seemed to have been the slowest way ever.

This is how I learned about my mothers passing. The last time I saw her alive was Christmas, the 26th to be exact, at my godmothers, her sisters house for our annual family holiday gathering. She was feeling great. So great, she denied my offer to give her a ride home. She was going to walk with her cane. She felt sooo good. Terminal lucidity is what this is called, the surge before death. It’s when a dying person experiences a surge of strength, and/or alertness in the days before passing away. This terminal lucidity kinda gives a false hope of the person getting better again, or so it did for me. Then, I didn’t know….in my mind my mother was still kinda invincible, this is something happening to others.

All this was 20 years ago. I was just 22. Little did I know how much my mothers death would change my life, or me for that sake. For as long as I was mother -except the first three months, I was an unmothered. Tough sh!t, I tell ya’. However, throughout the years I found mothers, many mothers, wise women whom taught me a lot, and so much more. They tought me about mothering, challenges, men, about truths, about many things we need to evolve. My mother, next to me eagerly observing her bringing up my 10 year younger sister, she taught me about intuition. I mean, certainly she taught me way more than that. Many of our ancestral ways were still reflected in how we were raised in our little town. No spiritual jargon – what was that?! We did grow up going to our catholic hometown church every weekend which we kids were not too fond of…and a plethora of books. There was one shelf in our living room which became of recollection when I first ran into this one book “Women who run with the wolves”, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. I picked it up. It was a 1.5 inch soft cover book with the smallest printed letters ever. I read the first page and couldn’t understand 2/3 of what I was reading. I grew up bilingual, the book was written in English. I was in 10th grade, around 1996. I read it the first time cover to cover 15 years after this ocurrance.

“Bauchgefuehl” is a word I heard so many times. Or “Des spuer ich im Urin”…haha it means Gutfeeling, and I can feel it in my urine. Mama constantly used these phrases. My intuition has taken me many places I wanted and needed to be, it has guided me on many passages and journeys, and helped shape a path of staying true to myself. I learned to fight like a woman, to defend my family, to love and work hard. This woman, my mother, Mama, she was strong and brave. She was so fierce. She is everything I strive to be – in my own way. A worrier going after what she wanted with full awareness of what she deserved. She could fight! …Like a wolf. She called me Lenii. (Well, with one I – the second is more to emphasize the pronunciation of eeeee :))

Today, 20 years after her passing and having made the experience of losing Ryan, my first born child, I have learned or realized this one vital thing. While weird to put in words and awkward to label; I don’t know if I feel a long time span, a short time span (which is still a concept my human mind is boggling with)… it appears to be timeless…It doesn’t feel like a time span anymore. It’s just a feeling. A feeling that’s there, right along missing her. It’s kind of a sense of being, a lingering, something that just comes as is. I am glad for this. I am glad for her being my mother and I am glad for the time I had with her. Today I am most grateful for whom she showed me to be. What she taught me without realizing probably and for how much I really am like her. She said:” Who do you think you get it from? You get it from me!”

Losing Mother is hard. Next to losing your child it is the hardest thing to bare. It is not easy to find a way to make it through, and it takes a long time to find a way to make the grief work…to work the grief. For the first year I thought I had to fill her shoes for my family. I cooked for all of us, cleaned, did laundry, took my sister in part time so our father could continue working three shift. I wanted to be there for my Papa and siblings, my family, to not have a void. I pushed her death away while finding myself still dialing her hospital room number for advice, or just a chat, weeks later. Then I hit rock bottom and let myself be daughter, bereaved daughter. I wrote her letters very regularly into a book which I still have. It was my way of working my grief. It felt good. As the years went on these tools of self help shifted. Through guidance from her and others, I found my way. A track I am confident on today, a journey filled with some pot holes, some mud puddles and loads of sh!t turds along…but I found it. All I am saying is, grief sucks. But it’s doable. We are meant to learn to live with grief. We are meant to keep it moving. Grief alters us all very differently. Everyone carries it differently. No Ones grief is ever the same. With Patience, Perseverance, Openness to the New…,much understanding and love from our loved ones we can do it…live and find the balance of pain and gratitude, softly cushioned by eternal love.

All my love to you Mama! I miss you like crazy and I am so glad you’re here. Thanks for taking my kid under your wing ❤

Eternally yours, Lenilein.

*she was 20 years old when birthing me.