The Awe of Wonder.

My heart cracked open when I saw my mother in the ICU. She slumbered on the bed with the grief of a life lost. The sorrow of a broken relationship with her own mother, and now, she becomes that same dying mother. I wonder if she feels the same way about her mother as her daughters do. I wonder if she misses her own mother, my grandmother, while she lies there, perhaps in a dreamless sleep.

I wonder a lot of things and yet, it seems too late to ask. Even though she somewhat recovered from the sickness that brought her into the ICU the first time, here we are, again.

Only a few weeks have passed and yet, here she sleeps for a second time with tubes down her throat and children wondering if this is, indeed, the end.

No One Here Gets Out Alive, the title of a Jim Morrison biography. How true that statement is. No one ever does.

Earth is an interesting classroom where we learn so much; lesson after lesson after lesson. It feels very gripping to me that my mother’s inevitable death will become my greatest teaching, lesson and test.

I woke this morning with a burning question:

Who am I without my mother?

I find it hard to believe that I am even asking this question, considering, I have spent most of my life trying to separate myself from her.

So the question remains and yet, maybe the true question is:

Who am I when I mother myself?