Une annee sans

[starlady]

A year ago, my mother died of ovarian cancer at the age of fifty-seven.

This is the post I wrote that day, and I still agree with what I said. I'd be missing the point if I said that my mom's death hasn't had a huge effect on me--looking back through my journal, it's only the posts after her diagnosis in which I recognize the current version of myself; before that I just didn't look at things the same way. The last two years of my life in particular were shaped by my mom's illness; I left Japan and multiple academic and career opportunities behind to be with her until the end--but as much as I have strong opinions on death, dying, life, cancer and how we talk about all of them in the States, it would be missing the point too not to note that my mom's life is what really has affected me. From the cradle to the grave, I am her daughter in countless ways; it's because of her, to take just one example, that I am going to graduate school, and it's because of her and my dad shelling out cash to send me to private schools that I was accepted to, and will attend, the graduate school that I did. And as much as having lost my mother just really is terrible at times, I've always been clear on the fact that between grief for one's parents and no parents I'll take the grief. And by the same token, the grief one feels is unaffected by age, I think; no matter how long I might have had with her, it would never have been long enough.

This afternoon my dad and I drove down to the beach where we scattered her ashes, in accordance with her wishes, the night before Mother's Day under a full moon last year. It was raining a bit today, but the water looked very turquoise. My mom loved the ocean, and it always reminds me of her; it also strikes me as a bona fide image of eternity, for what that's worth. But there's never a day that I don't think of her, really; some days I can honestly accept the fact that she's gone, and others I find that I am less reconciled to it than I thought, or would honestly like. Some days I can remind myself that I know that she loved me, and was and would have been proud of me, while others I think that saying such things, however true they are, is missing the point. It's not a linear process. But regardless, I've never thought there was any choice but to get on with it, and to get on with life. My mom wanted us to do that, as we could, and she was right.

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This is my post for the day, so have a link via oursin about Corvus moneduloides, an extraordinarily intelligent species of tool-using crow. Crows! I love crows so much, they are awesome. 

Comments

[starlady]

感謝するよ。