Motherboard
It was exactly one year ago today that my Mother took her last breath. Looking back at the last 365 days without her feels like a critical inflection point. Her birthday, Christmas, Mother’s Day, my birthday, and all of the days in between seemed to pass as the world continued to turn. This waking dream has felt pretty surreal, teeter-tottering between the two worlds of the dead and the living. Through her own life and death, she continues to be the inspiration that drives my life forward. There’s nothing like a mother’s love to make you want to live the life you both would be proud of.
A year before my mother became ill, I dreamt that she had passed away. In my dream, the next day I went to a coffee shop where I gazed across the room and I saw my mother sitting by the windowsill. However, she was a much younger version, who was stunningly beautiful and untouched by trauma and time. I walked over to her and her beautiful blue eyes pierced right through me. I asked “Mom, what are you doing here? You aren’t supposed to be here.” She replied “What do you mean? I’m right here.” We went back and forth with me eventually yelling at her with tears streaming down my face saying “You aren’t here! This isn’t real!” I then took out my phone and took a picture of her. As I had suspected, the photograph showed a blank chair with no one sitting there. However, right in front of me, my mother continued to stare back at me with all the love in her eyes. She reassured me “I am right here.” I woke up from that dream knowing that her love and presence would in fact never leave me. I can still feel the resonance of that dream as if it happened yesterday.
On my Mothers’s deathbed, we went through old photographs and that is what she continued to say…” seems like yesterday.” What an experience to look through your life through a series of pictures, each moment in time comprised of so many memories both beautiful and hard. That day, she wished me to live a happy and joyful life. Amongst all of her pain and confusion, she still had enough strength to tell me to enjoy the life that she had given to me.
During the months that my mother was sick and dying, I sat ceremoniously with sacred plant medicines. During one of my ceremonies, the medicine brought me and my Mother to perform on a stage. We were part of a play and were the two leading roles. Midway through this “play” I noticed that my mother’s script had run out of lines so she exited stage left. I did a quick costume change into Ministerial clothing as I stepped into my new role as a Minister and my mother stayed behind the curtain pulling all of the levies and setting the stage just right for me to fulfill my next leading role. This is how I continue to see her, just beyond the curtain pulling all the strings.
In the same ceremony, the medicine brought me out into the middle of the ocean, where I was on one boat and my Mother was on another. Like two ships crossing paths in the night, we waved at one another knowing that we were headed to two different seashores. These shores both provided us with freedom. The place where my Mother was traveling brought her freedom from physical pain and the cancer that riddled her body. It also brought her freedom to no longer crave the alcohol that ruled her inner world. My freedom meant safety….safety to finally put down the armor and the shield that had been protecting me from my dysfunctional family. Without all of this armor, I was finally free to let my Mother’s love wash all over me, something that had never been safe enough to do before.
About a month ago, I hosted a plant medicine ceremony for a client who had just lost their Mother. During the ceremony, she began communing with her mother and bringing messages over from the other side. The brilliance and beauty of these messages were no doubt sent from the divine. During our integration session, she mentioned a point during the ceremony where she questioned if it was her mother visiting her or her own inner wisdom. I silently thought to myself “They are intrinsically intertwined.”
She then brought up the concept of the Motherboard, the primary circuit board in a computer. It serves as the central platform that connects and allows communication between all the various components of the computer. I thought to myself how perfect of an explanation for our internal wiring. We all come from the Mother. Could the Motherboard be another name for our central nervous system?
On my birthday this past year, I found myself missing my Mother. It was my first birthday that my Mother and my Father, the two people who gifted me this life, were no longer tethered here. No one warns you about what a lonely and isolating feeling this can be. On top of this, I still found myself in the season of Winter. So much of who I used to be had been broken and I was still assembling all the new parts, unsure of what shape it would all take.
I sat down at my altar to write a letter to my Mother on my birthday, hoping she might have some answers for me. After describing my current predicaments I wrote to her “I wonder what you would think about the way my life has turned out and what words of wisdom you would have for me.” Suddenly, I got an internal impulse to put my pen down. I put my hands on my heart and closed my eyes to tune in. After about a minute, my Mother’s voice came to me loud and clear. She assured me that I was her daughter and never doubted my capabilities. She reminded me that we all go through hard times, but she had raised me to triumph over all challenges. THIS right here…the Motherboard. I wiped the tears as I felt her presence deep within me, she had never left. Those piercing blue eyes remind me that “I am right here.”
In a weird way, I feel that my Mother’s death day was “our rebirthday".” It was a chance for us both to start anew. The day that she died I sat at my altar again and wrote a card from her to me. In this card were all the wishes and advice that my mom wanted to bestow upon me for the upcoming year. After writing it, I sealed it in an envelope and kept it on my altar as a living prayer between me and my Mother for one year. Today I open it and see how many of those wishes came true. Having believed that I gained the most incredible guardian angel (those who knew my mom know what a force she was!), I trust that she held this prayer with me with all her might.
Today I will write the next card for the following year and keep it on my altar. It is just one of the rituals that tether me to my Mother in this new cosmic relationship. I will also have Chinese food in her honor, something I always bitched and moaned about when she was alive and had a craving for it. Now, every bite I take will make me feel closer to her. Even the most heartbreaking losses can become beautiful when you steep them in ritual.
I love you, Mom. I hope you enjoy the beef choi mein. xo
