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jenny lucas Online
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- Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 5:39 pm
Mon Apr 28, 2014 12:35 am
Koala - in your words, I hear Matthew Arnold's poem with its line 'the slow withdrawing' in my head. The disengagement from life. Do you not think that perhaps for your mother now it is like it is when we are very, very sleepy, and all we want to do is close our eyes and drift away? When we are that sleepy, we simply don't want to take an interest in anything, engage with anything or anyone - we want only to be left in peace.
Perhaps 'making her peace' is now what your mother is intent on doing?
Would it help to think of it like this? Surely, one of the worst ways to die is when we feel full of life? When we are vividly aware of this world, and want to participate in it, and engage with it, and savour it, and are filled with goals and purposes and intentions and ambitions? Surely to be 'called to die' when we are still in the middle of living fully, is very cruel? (It seemed cruel to my husband 'called to die' when he was in the middle of living, in the middle of being a dad to our son, a husband to me, planning all sorts of things that we would be doing that year, and in all the years to come thereafter....)(And how much crueller, seeing your Anzac day image, for all those young men who were never given the gift of growing old.....)
So, if your mother is indeed now 'withdrawing' from interests in this world, is that not a blessing? If she is feeling the tide running out of life, taking her with it, is that not something to welcome for her? That she is not being 'cut short' in the middle of living vividly?
Yes, your instinct will be to fight it, to hold her back, to try and re-engage her, to make her 'want to live', to turn that tide......we who are living can only, truly, understand wanting to live.....
Yet remember the 'last blessing' bestowed upon the dying King Lear - 'Oh let him pass - he hates him that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer'.......
Accepting that my husband was dying, was in his final days of end stage, was the most terrible realisation of my life, and yet it had to be done - I had to make that mental journey, to stop trying to hold him back, keep him with me. I had to let him pass. And there came a time when all I could do was simply take his hand, and hold it ......
Perhaps that time is now coming for you, and for your mother. Perhaps having you beside her, holding her hand, is what she now wants most in all this mortal world.....
Wishing you courage and strength and reminding you that those we love we never lose....
Jenny.