Dear Mom,

I love you.  I feel a deep wave of love come over me when I say that and it brings tears to my eyes.  I love you with every single cell of my body, mind and spirit. Even my ego has a stake in it.  It has been a meandering path for you but I look back at our lives and see every turn we took as a family was only meant to bring us closer to each other and closer to our pure inner essence of God.

I got really really lucky when the veil dropped upon my birth back then in November of 19xx.  I can talk about you and Dad and wax eloquent on all the richness and depth you both had as individuals, about the incredible experience of getting to know you both as your daughter, as the grandparents of my children, and as fellow human beings, but I’d rather tell you how grateful I am that it happened the way it did.  Little did we all know, we’ve been working on this incredible curriculum we called down to get us free and back home, back to the garden.

I’ve been sleep walking thru a lot of parts of my life, Mom.  I needed to live it this way, to go down those dark alleys that you feared, shake hands with my demons.  I needed to so I could be here now to understand that it was all ok, even though there was so much darkness.  You stood by me despite what I know were your own doubts that I would ever pull through the dark night of my soul. The failed marriages, the alcoholism and other addictions, giving up custody of my son, stumbling through years of parenting special needs children, half awake, barely conscious, calling down grace.   I hope you can come to some measure of peace in your soul and let go of anything that you think you might have done wrong or less than perfect which might have created more suffering for me.  It was all grace, it is all grace.

This is what you are:

a long walk in the woods on a day, any day, naturalist

whoever goes along, learns and grows

cloth napkins at dinner and all the food groups at every meal

up early to exercise and up late to do mending.  

alto in the church choir, bell ringer, just for fun

cross country skiing for hours at the first sticking snow  

head thrown back in full bodied laughter, every summer

on a porch or in a kitchen,

with your family my family, our family  

long car rides with word games and license plate spotting

museums where my brother and I would be waiting for hours for you to finish reading all the informative placards then making sure we didn’t miss anything on the car ride home

the one to talk about the “meaning” of the movie

the story in the song

coke classic stashed in the back of my refrigerator like it’s crack cocaine

piece of a pumpkin muffin hidden behind my toaster

care and concern and self sacrifice and light.  

the almost imperceivable wince at the tattoo

the tense mouth during the Simpsons shows you sat by and tolerated

the puritan work ethic that never let you rest.

Pied beauty.

Like daughter

Like mother

Now, all the lessons you taught me that I didn’t think stuck, all the many times I have been in the woods and remembered that I was supposed to be there for some reason but couldn’t quite remember why, all the places we went and things we saw and laughs we shared and books I read that you strongly encouraged…. you are all that too.

You and Dad were the most incredible bookends for a lost soul of a daughter who finally is waking up to knowing that everything I sought after was there the whole time, the groundwork laid with loving awareness, for minute upon minute, day upon day, year upon year.   I believe you would say that is how our heavenly father cares for us.  You are perfection in every moment and you have no clue.  You carved the keyhole and waited.  I found the keys and now we can be together here, and now with a glass of wine for you and seltzer for me, and laugh and love and know we are only just walking each other home, for the rest of our lives in these bodies, on this planet.

I love you Mom. Thanks for choosing me.  Happy Mother’s Day.
Jill