Letting Go

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

by Mary Oliver

My friend Sharon sent me this poem. I’m thinking about the process of letting my mother go. It’s time. My sister, husband and children, in the company of our pastor and his wife, buried my mother on Friday. Words of appreciation for her legacy were spoken. Strums on a guitar provided comfort, accompaniment for her journey.

The earthly tether of daughter to mother, mother to daughter, now is broken and we are both free. When the mortal coil is shuffled off, love doesn’t leave but the constraints of relationships – the responsibility of parent to child, child to parent, fall away. I do not believe that my mother any longer concerns herself with what I am thinking, nor is she privy to my thoughts. Maybe the biggest adjustment is that she is no longer “mom,” she is Shirley.

It comforts me to realize that she is no longer stuck at the end of a life she increasingly lost interest in because it was consumed by pain and loss. I believe she is now at the beginning of a new life that compels her entire focus. No looking back, and so I will live the rest of my mortal life without looking over my shoulder for her. That is, as soon as I can break the habit of reaching for phone to “call mom” to check in and keep her up to date.