Carrying On for Mother

When on chooses one can take on whatever one chooses. –sm


Taking up a fallen banner has always been seen as courageous, as only the courageous did it. Some people are in sorter supply of courage than others. For them, other tasks are taken up. This is as it should be for without diversity there cannot be unity. But the courageous will pick up banners if needed.

And so, I wonder at and ponder upon exactly what of my mother’s banners I want to pick up and continue. The clues may be in the things I have saved or valued from her house. I have spent the last month since her death, slowly sorting through several drawers, shelves, closets and boxes.

But what of my mother will I keep alive? Again comes the answer, “Look to your choices”. What we choose is what we get. What we choose is what we value. Therefore by choosing more and more we add more and more value.

I have chosen practical items from my mother’s home. A couch, a table, a cabinet, her tv. From these practical items I continue the banner my mother carried of realistic thinking, no-nonsense doing and her matter-of-fact way of making everything useful.

I have made a few choices out of purely monetary reasons. Those choices, keep my mother’s banner alive that was fair and honest, reasonable, prudent and strategic in things pertaining to money.

And, I have chosen symbolic items too. There is an ironwood turtle, a wooden replica of an African head from 300 A.D. some simple jewelry, items that represent our family past. The turtle seems to represent the solid nature of my mother. The beauty and polish of the wood, like the soft finish of her fine furniture is a small piece that represents the desire she had for beauty and quality of workmanship. The African head is still a mystery to me. How she came by it, what it meant to her, why she kept it, is something I may never know. Perhaps a dead relative left it to her. Perhaps she bought it in a frivolous act of spending. I didn’t ever see it in her home; I found it hidden away in a drawer. Was it her dark side? I like to think it was the primitive, wild part of her she never expressed, but always desired. Whatever it was to her, I keep it in remembrance of the mystery my mother was and continues to be for me. The banner of mystery is every woman’s banner. I like to think that my mother’s banner of mystery is from the deepest parts of her nature. The very beginning of mankind.

So I choose to not only remember my mother’s ways of practicality, her love of fine beauty, her ways of fairness, and her mystery, but I will keep those banners flying in my own life.

I do not choose to be the same person my mother was. Whatever qualities, I possess I know them to be mine. My ways are not her ways, but her ways can also be my ways if I choose them and I do choose those that serve me.

I have felt the shock of my own mortality through my mother’s death. I believe that facing one’s mortality is the task of old age. It is kept from the young by a fog of forgetfulness. When one ages one begins to awake to a new reality. This awakening can occur prior to aging in which case the person has longer to prepare for death. But it does always come. Perhaps Alzheimer’s is a self-imposed slumber when the shock of mortality is too great. As I awaken to my mortality, I appreciate the ways of all my ancestors, not just my mother. I feel the line of humanity running through my body and I welcome the time when I depart this world and enter the next.

Then others, my children, my friends, my readers can take up my fallen banners if they so choose.