Moving through heart and soul

FLESH AND SKY

O maternal love,
heartbreaking for the gold
of bodies suffused
with the secret of wombs.

...

This quatrain by that beautiful freak Pier Paolo Pasolini, poet and mysteriously murdered notoriously controversial filmmaker (translated from the Italian by David Stivender & J. D. McClatchy) stumbled me out of the morass of my grief. Time and art collided in a moment of need and took me to where I could finally accept a ray of coherence into my mental chaos.

Am I no longer a daughter now that I am motherless? I am a mother myself, and someday, if fortunes shine, a grandmother-- but I wonder if I am a daughter anymore. Shortly after mom passed away, to help me understand why I was erupting in, among other more expected emotions, fury and fear, Joseph said that as long as your primary parent is alive, something inside you always believes there is someone to fall back on, some ultimate level of authority and approval. When that parent dies, you stand alone and that can be terrifying. It was one of those truths that resonates immediately, and yes, I did feel abandoned, stripped and vulnerable but now that more than a month has pased I am coming to a deeper understanding of my grief. I have come to realize that my bereavement is something that I never will and never should get over; that it is a part of me and something I should cherish. English does not have a better word for it. It is the core of my mother that lives in love and memory and makes me more like the best of her.

As a daughter losing a mom, I've lost those arms around me. I've lost the one who gave me the life to give another life. She was the artist that sanctified the art in me and the art in my son. It is a light of art and the blood of life that has flowed through me and now turns red as the vein is cut. It is from deeper than the soul, it is woman's blood, blood of wisdom, the secret of wombs.

I won't heal, I'm not supposed to heal, I am supposed to transform the wise wound into a faith that outshines beauty and art that outlasts life. Like my mom.