Written on 24 March 2023 from ~34,000 feet in the air
This blog post has been in the back of my mind for a wee while. A 10 hour flight to Ireland without any inflight entertainment has finally tipped me over the edge into actual writing.
My mom, Mairin passed away in May 2020 unexpectedly. I was almost 5-months pregnant with our second baby at the time.
Covid was a full global phenomenon then. We flew to Ireland from San Francisco via a couple of empty flights through Boston. We were traveling with our almost two-year-old during a time when traveling wasn’t advised but I deeply felt the need to be there for the funeral.
Mairin was a good friend to so many people but the funeral attendance numbers where capped at 20 or so close family members. It felt really strange and surreal. Most people had to stand outside the church in the rain to be present. And yet, they were there, standing in the rain for her.
Those days and weeks in Ireland were the first phase of me grieving the loss of my mom. Looking back now it was like dipping my toe in the waters of this loss. I was a part of the collective grief with my family members, sharing of the stories of her.
My sister and I went through my mom’s entire wardrobe and donated almost all her clothes to charity. We kept back a few tops that we fondly remembered her wearing so that we could have them made into teddy bears. My sister asked me how many teddy bears I wanted and I said three, one for my daughter, one for the baby girl inside me and one for me.
Once I returned to San Francisco there was the preparing for baby – acupuncture, doctor’s appointments and arranging who would help out with our two year old. I always felt especially far from home during the pre and post birth periods as there wasn’t family visits and support nearby and on-hand. This was another flavor of the grief in that it was felt more in solitude.
When we had our second baby that September, I so strongly felt the grief of becoming a mother without my mother to share this joy with. This joyful event hovered over a deep well of loss.
I wondered how I could grieve without getting swallowed up into that dark well.
That is still a question I consider and think about often.
Since I was little, I have felt a connection to some of my family members who have passed away. Some I knew in this life and some I did not.
I would call on them for help through difficult times or for support with my fears. After my mom passed, to talk with her and connect like I did with my other ancestors felt too painful.
I have a picture of her on my altar and sometimes I would talk to her and tell her how things were going and that missed her and that I felt so lucky to have her as my mom. These conversations would bring up a combination of relief in the connection and an almost unbearable loss.
Last November I was at a workshop (an actual in-person one) and we had done a full day of ancestral and parental linage work. During the somatic intuitive movement piece there was an invitation to feel love, feel myself as love, as love moving through me.
I felt the love that my mom had for me and how it was still there. I felt the love I have for my mom.
Intertwined was the grief and loss but to open my heart to feel the love meant feeling the loss as well.
Just last week, I was reorganizing some boxes in the "box room”. We recently moved house so we still have an abundance of yet to be unpacked boxes. I saw a box labeled “blue bears” on it and I knew that it was the box with the three teddy bears in it.
A part of me did not want to open, let alone unpack that box with those teddy bears in it. That part of me didn’t want to feel the grief and meet those memories in that moment.
A couple of days later during a movement meditation I felt that I could turn towards the teddy bears in that box.
I felt how by not opening that box I am keeping a piece of my heart closed and locked down. Instead I decided to find a place in our new home for all three of these bears. I wanted to welcome my mom’s spirit and memory more fully into our home.
In the girl’s room their two teddy bears sit side-by-side on a shelf overlooking their bed. And in my bedroom, I put up a shelf just for my blue bear so that blue bear can watch over me and serve as a reminder of my mom.
I don’t have a pretty ribbon to neatly tie together the loss of my mom. I am very much still in process with it. I don’t expect to ever have any sense of completion with it either. I intend to just keep turning towards it with awareness and compassion and sit with it when I can.
Fiona Walsh Dinan is a longtime member of BAGI www.therapywithfiona.com