Mom

Early Saturday morning, I half-woke crying and gripping my boyfriend's shoulders for dear life. I was having my, maybe, 200th dream about my mother since she died. 

They're always some sort of variation on her being in pain and pleading for my help.

She died in not a dissimilar fashion. Having suffered with progressive M.S. for the majority of her life and then being nailed with a rare form of blood cancer called Multiple Myeloma, her body was ravaged by nonstop pain and frankly, torture, up until the day she died. And I was her caretaker. 

Later that Saturday, my sister-in-law contacted me to let me know that she and my brother and their children would be going to Kauai for their vacation in a few weeks and she would be doing the research on how they could bring and dispose of my mother's ashes there. And, would I be willing to do that?

This was something that they were going to do a couple of years ago but for some reason, I've had a hard time relinquishing them from my grip. They've been in my apartment, stashed away, this entire time.

I don't know why I've done this. I don't believe in the body and spirit as one. I believe they are completely separate entities and the body is merely the shell or vessel for the being. I had no problem disposing of my father's ashes when he passed. So my reticence to give up what was left of my mother's physical form made no sense to me. It makes no sense to me.

I'm going to take a leap of faith here that no one reading this will judge me too harshly, mock or laugh at what I'm about to theorize over.  When I received those texts from my sister-in-law, for the first time since I've had those ashes, I suddenly had zero hesitation about their plan. I had always wondered after every one of these dreams and nightmares if my mother was trying to communicate something to me and more specifically, if she was trying to communicate to me that, wherever she was....WHATEVER she was, she wasn't ok. 

And suddenly two days later it hit me, the very simple thought, that it was all me. I had the imagery of her pain and her pleading for my help IMPRINTED into me. I needed to let her go and I needed to let go of ALL of her. And not just her ashes but what I have left of her things: her books, her dishes, her....whatever. I've been carrying around this dead woman and her pain for the years since she's passed and I let it infect me. I have my own pain. It's plenty. But I added on. 

I don't know if this is going to work; this physical "letting go", but I have to do it. It's way past the time.