My Mom

Tucson, by Felix Pasilis

Saturday, April 26, 2008, 8:10 AM

“The play of our lives”

“My Mom”

It is unbelievably still out there. One teeny tiny leaf at end of long thin branch is stirring just the slightest bit. But not one single other leaf in tree is even moving. I wonder why the air is so still. The birds are still hopping around, and the huge big black bumblebee alighted on the tree. O now the ever slightest air current arrived. There is subtle swaying of leaves. But now it stopped. It is perfectly still and perfectly quiet, except for the bird calls. It makes you think today will be a hot day because of the stillness of the early morning air. It still seems unusual to me the air could be this still. Is there a hush? Or Planet having a dream? How odd to look out and not a leaf moving. It’s like a film where someone pressed “stop” or “freeze.” Except the birds are all flying about. But the world they are flying about in, is stock still.

Because my dad went to Heaven 14 years ago, my mom is in charge now. There is one parent instead of two. There is just her. She is in charge of everything. Which appears to boil down to being in charge of the money. But money seems to encompass a lot. I often wonder if I would act any differently towards her if she did not have this power to give or withhold money. I have a hunch I wouldn’t. Because even tho I am happy when she is generous, disappointed when she isn’t-- there are many many waves of feelings about how she is with the money-- I notice when it comes to action, I am always the same to her. I guess your relationship with your mom takes place on so many levels at the same time.

It just seems interesting and unusual to me now, right at this instant, altho I never thought about it before, that the last twenty years, or the last phase, or the last act of the play, should be Annie and Danny and Sophie. It was Sophie and Larry my whole life and it seemed like it would be Sophie and Larry forever. It is your mom and dad your whole life and seems like it would be mom and dad forever. That that is the constellation, Dad and Mom, Annie and Danny. And then suddenly Dad leaves the family for Heaven. Which leaves Mom as the big cheese, Mom stands alone, she is it, she has to do everything, she is the only parent, all relationship is with her. She is front and center.

That is what makes this 3rd Act in all of our lives so interesting now. For everyone it is different. Harry has both of his parents, nothing changed for him. Jill has her dad but not her mom. For Jan both parents are in Heaven. Each has a different configuration in their life now. And most of us, not Harry of course, have a different configuration than the one we had our whole life.

It is different for me than for many others because I am New Age, and do believe 2012 marks the end of the world and the beginning of Heaven on earth. I believe a whole new play starts on 2012. So what we are in now is the final act of the play we have been in our whole lives. That it is Act 3 and the curtain will come down, and go back up on a whole other play.

Where nothing is the same.

And I am finding this 3rd and final Act very interesting.

It is just odd that my dad is not around for the 3rd Act. You wonder sometimes what things would be like if he were. This is not something I ever wondered about in any other area ever before. My husband always does, about everything. “If JFK had not been shot, how would it all have worked out?” “If we had done this instead of that, how would it have all worked out?” He constantly changes all the configurations we have been dealt in every department of life, to wonder how it would have worked out with that configuration. But I have never done that. This is the very first time I have been curious about a different configuration. If my dad were still here, what would this 3rd Act be like.

It’s not that I don’t long for my dad. As Eddie said in his email last week about his own dad, “I miss him so.” And there is some odd way that you do miss your dad every day, missing him is always with you, and sometimes there is acute longing for him too. It’s a stream which always runs through your consciousness, the stream of your dad, like a stream in the river of your consciousness. You never miss your mom because she is there in Walnut Creek, having supper with your brother every Tuesday evening, and you get emails from her too. The way she is a constant stream in your consciousness is so different, because you are always working on your relationship with her in your mind. With my dad in Heaven I don’t do that. I love him and I miss him. I don’t work on my relationship with him in my mind. Which doesn’t mean that relationship didn’t need work too. It was just work interruptus that he went to Heaven. It ended that project, and the whole project became my mom.

It’s like front burner and back burner. Your mom is alone on the front burner, your dad is there on the backburner. You’re still in relationship with him, but it has changed, it’s a back burner relationship. My hunch with my mom, is the whole deal revolves around trying to get to know her, trying to understand her. Knowing her must be the key to everything, if I knew her I would understand her. And somehow I think the converse would then take place automatically. If I could figure out how to know my mom, and hence understand her, she would then automatically know me and hence understand me. But it appears I make zero progress in getting to know my mom. It is like some distant planet in the solar system, always shimmering off in the distance, like Neptune. It’s as if I can see her out there, but never come close.