death

lens-artists: life’s changes

trailed with clouds

the layered memories

of time forever gone

stands between us now

in this spring dawn

There is an earth-shattering moment that barges into a life, unexpectedly, shifting and tearing apart everything … everything in the heart held to be true. After the denial, disassociation, and numbing begin to ease, there is a knowing that the “before you” has been ripped away and now an “ongoing emerging you” has begun a never-ending search for THE door of clarity and resolution. Within that search life continues. Life with its births and deaths. Life creating pathways of sorrow and joy. Pathways of contemplation created through photography and haiku.

rain falls

memories of lost years

left by a cloud

My mother’s passing in the spring of 2016, expected yet unexpected, occurred during this journey with WordPress. The intention to validate my mother’s life opened a gate of posting 100 days of contemplative photography and haiku to remember, honor, and share the life of a woman, my mom.

meandering tales

beyond a haze of tear drops

my mother’s face – mine.

Memories of my mom often come to visit…they are remembered moments that announce her arrival, not as the frail woman with a fierce determination that time had transformed formed but the woman who carried with her the stature of Danish Vikings…warriors, explorers, conquerors, survivors.

morning haze

jewels of rain, falling

in a dream

In our next spring

let’s meet as butterflies

afield

Though we are parted,

If on Casper Mountain Peak

I should honor the sound

of the pine trees swaying there –

with the summer breeze.

After my mother’s memories fade and life’s present moments come into focus I often wonder … if we had met – not as mother-daughter – but as children in a playground would she have wanted to be my friend? I know she would have been my bestest of friends.

Thank you Anne (Slow Shutter Speed) for the invitation to share what has “enriched and/or changed” my life.

silent sunday

Sony NEX-5N f/6.3 1/2500s 210mm 100 ISO

As the winter winds travel across Wyoming’s landscape

the swirling snow releases its memories of you, lost …

somewhere… on Casper Mountain.

Its frigid touch awakens me to your

aloneness – in that wilderness of blinding snow

cries – deafened by the river of winds,

calling – out in hope for

a human form – to emerge out of the whiteness

the warmth – of a human hand

the sound – of a voice, comforting you

accompanying – you home.

As I become hostage to this winter’s swirling thoughts

the river winds tear into my soul

releasing tears arising from

the darkness of grief’s aloneness, seeking

a knowing to emerge out of ignorance’s darkness

you found – peace

within – a loving presence

embracing – you

accompanying – you home.

Lawrence John Anderson, January 11, 1957 – January 20, 1980

life…manifesting again and again

do you also miss

your mother?

cicada ~Issa*

mom

Tulip

In Thich Nhat Hanh”s book, No Death No Fear,  he shares a personal experience associated with the passing away of his mother.

“The day my mother died, I wrote in my journal, ‘A  serious misfortune of my life has arrived.’  I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam … I dreamed of my mother. …When I woke up…I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside. …Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet…wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine alone but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. These feet that I saw as ‘my’ feet were actually ‘our’ feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.

From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.

When you lose a loved one, you suffer. But if you know how to look deeply, you have a chance to realize that his or her nature is truly the nature of no birth, no death. There is a manifestation and there is the cessation of manifestation in order to have another manifestation.

…If you can stop and look deeply, you will be able to recognize your beloved one manifesting again and again in many forms. You will again embrace the joy of life.” (pp. 4-5)

In remembrance of my mother’s birthday…who passed away April 19, 2016.

*cited: http://www.haikuguy

100 days…100th day

…the scent of mothballs signals the opening of a small steamboat trunk entrusted with long-forgotten memorabilia. Carefully placed upon a layer of women’s 1930 era clothing are three stacks of yellow ribbon-tied envelopes. Within each are hand-written letters reminiscent of second grade penmanship inquiring, “Dear Mother, how are you? Fine I hope.” brendamilyOn the left side is a stationery box filled with certificates of marriage, birth, baptism, and death intermingled with a child’s brilliantly colored drawings.

Beneath the box is a small silk sachet holding a solitary diamond engagement ring and an ivory locket. At the bottom of the trunk, children’s books and wooden blocks with carved letters surround a miniature wooden rocking chair and a one-button eyed velvety-patched teddy bear. I become distracted from the remaining contents as black and white photograph images softly held within the folds of a woman’s garnet silk dress glide in the air and scatter on the floor.
The photographic images are a visual memoir of a young family where trust once allowed two young sisters to roam free throughout a field of tall, yellowed grass. “How many dad3-copydays,” my questioning mind wonders, “how many days were left before the decline of my father’s health shifted the lights of a colorful present into the gray-shaded time of waiting?” Within this stillness of waiting, memory tells of a young child seeking solace through repetitive rocking behaviors and of a father’s fragile heart enduring a turbulent wait for a donated aorta.

I hear compassion speak to my heart and I begin to feel how my father intuitively knew of my inner turmoil and of the tranquil stillness within rhythmic repetition. His gift of a rocking chair tells me some fifty years after his death of the multiple emotional and physical sufferings within his suffering, the interconnectedness of the suffering within the family, and of his wish to ease our suffering.

As the fabric of the dress glides between my fingertips, the shadow of grief that holds the memories of my son emerges from a compartment hidden within the trunk. An old fear dustin20awakens as the image of grief’s blackened shadow looms over me with its death-filled abyss of intermingled condemnation, uncertainty, and emptiness. I feel the void that will consume me if I were to release the eternal care of my son to its embrace. I come to know that I hold no trust  that within death is compassionate loving-kindness. Awareness arises to tell me that as I run from grief with the anguish of powerlessness to protect the heart of my soul, like an addict running from her addiction, grief becomes even more insidious. In this undifferentiated chaos of anguish, fear, and mistrust there is hope [larger than a mustard seed] which seeks for the magical garment when donned will transform me into the Great Mother. It is childhood faith that clings to the belief that as God witnesses this transformation, absolution and reconciliation would simultaneously subdue this impenetrable monster and return my son, whole with the spirit of life, to…*

 

*cited:

A Mediative Journey with Saldage

B Catherine Koeford