It’s been four months today. It seems forever long since I last saw Ryan. On the other side, I look at his pictures and he is right here. I can feel and hear him close. “I gotchu, mom!”
I’ve been working on trying to figure out certain things. One day I will have to let go so Ryan’s soul can be where it needs to be… the next mission it is being placed on. But what does this letting go mean for me on this side, the physical side? It already seems like he’s constantly slipping through my fingers.
These last four months feel like a bad dream, as if he was drafted into a war. I wouldn’t know where he is, couldn’t get a hold of him, wouldn’t know if he came back but surely I’d have hope for it. The thing is, then I would fear for his life, constantly. Today I sit here and have come to the conclusion that there is no worry, anymore. No fear. In my current state of mind, heart, and soul, the feeling of worry for him is gone. Do you know the feeling of lying awake, wondering what your ‘wet behind the ears- know it all- adult’-child is doing? Are they safe, drunk, high, in a fight,… are they in trouble, breaking the law,…? Where are they right now? While it is and was one thing to let a teenager grow into a young adult, no matter the tools you placed in their hands, to hopefully make good choices, take actions towards good karma vs. the bad. Once they are out on their own we can’t protect them any more. We can’t constantly be on their tails to correct behaviors, or certain moves they chose to make. We can’t fix sh!t. We have to let them go…let them go to make their own experiences, learn additional levels of cause and effect…
How do you let a loved one go though, someone moving on from this life- not just into adolescences, or moving out of state. Regardless of age: 19, 42, 60,70,80…if we keep holding on, can they really move on to what the journey of their soul is destined to do?
Does letting go mean forgetting them? Distancing myself? I really don’t think this anymore, actually. What does it mean? Truly, I wonder if letting go just doesn’t mean what we interpret it to be, here, earth side.
What if it doesn’t mean forgetting them, maybe it doesn’t mean we need to let the distance grow in between ‘us’. Maybe it doesn’t mean necessarily being without them, especially not forgetting them.
What if it means something like shifting our conditioned thought, the dictionary definition of what relationship is defined as in words, in language, in person: The kinship, or the “state of affairs existing between those having relations or dealings”.
What if we learn to feel them more, rather holding on to the thought of needing to hear their voice, or being able to touch them – isn’t this what we do when they are in the back of our heads anyways? It’s just a different way, more sense-less… Or, we learn to understand that seeing them in a physical body is not really required to love them and have a ‘relationship’ with them? What if we nurture our memories with our loved one by talking to them (I like doing this in the car while driving by myself- nowadays nobody can tell if you’re on the phone or simply talking to yourself), about them, holding space because they did exist, they did have their physical space…What if we understand that we don’t know everything, we don’t see everything, and mostly, we definitely aren’t everything?! What if, where our loved ones are, regardless of the age when they moved on from Mama Earth, there really is no age and we are holding on to all these weird things thought and society find essential, to not forgetting someone? All this conditioning, so many ‘what if’s’…
Today I make a conscious choice. I make the choice to turn off societies noise. The expectations society has on how a person has to grief or move forward, or on. Don’t ever, please(!) tell a grieving person to ‘move on’, let alone to ‘get over it’. We will all one day deal with grief of losing a dear soul, be it human, animal, or even drastic changes of life altering situations …if we haven’t yet. No matter our individual belief when it comes to the after life, every person has their own timeline, (mostly no timeline), and ways of grieving. And it is definitely not linear. Likewise, no other can tell what is right or wrong to work through this agonizing pain, and all the feels… let alone how long it should take.
But if you wish, simply be there, here, sometimes all we need is someone that wants to just sit and listen, or maybe sit in silence with us, or to share a chocolate brownie with, or a doobie. Sometimes we don’t need advice or a hug and being alone is all the medicine. That’s okay too, though. To each their own…
Today I chose to hold space for my own ways of grieving, for myself, alongside my loved ones whom have moved on and are trying to move on, like my Mama and Ryan.
We have to let go, let go of thought and learn how to feel and create something different, something that doesn’t need words. Something that doesn’t need explained or heard. Something that works for us, individually. Something our heart and soul feel is the right thing. But we have to let go…We must let go of the fear of the unknown, what’s to come without them. There isn’t really a without them for as long as we tell their stories…
I must learn to let go while keeping him close, alive, by holding his space. Holding Space for Ryan- and myself, as his mother, a bereaved mother, a mother of three more kids, simply a mother, simply myself!
“Amid the noise and haste…”
~Max Ehrmann, Desiderata
Holding Space 