#SOL18: Motherhood

The Familiar Falling Away (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing. - Solnit, Rebecca. A Field Guide to Getting Lost (p. 22). 

I.

For each easyspace, I have occupied and forward movement felt--grief nonetheless reasserts itself and some days, even two years after, I stumble.  Life after Rob feels cumbersome. The starkest difference between life prior to Rob's death and now is that living life then was effortless. I had no idea.

Loss continues to open me to new understandings. Now, unmoored, life requires a level of attention I did not need before, revealing the unfamiliar--especially of parenting.

II.

The image that tops this post is one I made of Devon running on a day we ditched school and work and I made images of Devon playing in the state park nearby. It was one of those fabulous fog days.

"What do you want me to do?" my son asked.
"Just take off and run. Here, take the umbrella."
"Okay."

Coming through the Rye (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

I did not know that day would later be a placeholder for the intangible time that rises between a son and his mother. Rob had gone to work that morning and Devon and I had gone to play.  I tell you now years later, I am so grateful for all that the image reminds me of and the place viewing it opens.

That was day about love. I did not know that then.

Later, we would return to another field. That evening I would lift my camera and see my son running through the field. Click.

So much more was captured then.


III.

Being a single mom now is stressful and at times, tender. Without Rob to talk through situations, I find myself acknowledging the limitations of being a mom.  There's so much that exceeds my grasp.

This past week my son turned 19. In a few weeks he'll be off to Europe where he so wants to live. I wonder what Rob would have to say about all this? What words might he offer? What perspective would he share? The familiar stance of mother-son has slipped as Devon has aged. What is emerging? Somedays I wonder where we have gone. 

What remains regardless of all of the doubt and worry, tenderness and talk is love. 

Poetry Break: Lost

Two Ravens (M.A. Reilly)

Lost

 - David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

From Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems by David Wagoner. © 1999 by David Wagoner. Used with the permission of the University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

#SOL16: We Were Never Lost

L: my family, C: My dad with Devon, R: Rob and Devon

I. 

I woke up this morning dragged from a dream I was having about fatherhood. Yes, an odd dream at that. I was talking in the dream and it was summer and sunny and yet, still cool as it is in the early morning. I was speaking about what being a father means--how I learned some of this by watching Rob with Devon, some of it by being the daughter of another Robert, my dad.

Fathering isn't a simple act for it defies the boundaries of time. It continues on even after our fathers die.

Years from now, Rob's actions, more than his words, will inform my son's life. His actions will take on new meaning as Devon matures.  Like I recall doing when Devon entered out lives, my thoughts about my mom changed, deepened as I could see her love in new ways that only motherhood could allow. I wish that for Dev.

II. 

Later in the morning I am reading a recent letter by Bonnie and she is relaying a time when she and her beloved husband, Tuvia, were visiting a friend's new farm. Tuvia thought they were lost and Bonnie writes--more for the present moment than the past I suspect--"We were never lost."

I stop reading as I let the last line sink in.  The words pull me back hard to earth and I realize what it means to feel my feet beneath me, feel the hardness of the ground, feel the here and now.

We were never lost. 

III.

And isn't that the center space of love--to hold in the moment the profound understanding that love anchors us? It anchors all of us and does so without effort.

I never felt lost on this planet when I was alongside Rob. Even when the road we were on literally was one we did not know, had trouble navigating, we were anchored to this earth by love.  I felt this as a child. I can recall being in Manhattan and holding on to my dad's hand as we walked down a midtown street on the West side and the towering buildings, the shuffle of people alongside us, coming at us, and the pails and pails of garbage some spilling into the street (yes, this was Manhattan in the late 1960s) could have overwhelmed a child, but it didn't.  I was anchored to the earth, learning from my dad how to trust. 

The world is mostly good his hand holding mine taught. I learned early that fear is more the absence of love than anything else. A father's love is a grand gift that we carry across the steps we make.

And isn't that sense of centeredness at the heart of what my son carries with him now?  He has been truly loved by his dad and perhaps that is what Devon was telling me a month ago when he said that we carry Rob with us--that Rob formed us. 

At first I thought that last statement was more true for him than me. For did I not come to this marriage a whole person?  But love is no mathematical proposition. It negates the logic of equivalency.  There is no equivalency in the love a father has for his child or a husband's profound love for his wife.

IV.

Rob did form us and that presence continues on. There was a consistency about my husband who had his moral compass aimed true north, much like my own dad. 

Do no harm. 
Love best what is other.
Be kind to yourself, too.
Live brilliantly. Don't hide.

No, even after Rob's death, Devon and I are never lost. 
Overwhelmed? Yes. 
But lost? No. 

#SOL16: Lost/Loss

The Hospital Wing (MA. Reilly, Italy, 2009)

I.

Five months ago, Rob, Dev and I drove two of Dev's friends who had spent a week with us to a train in Newark so they could travel home to Virginia. Later that night we decided to end summer by taking a quick trip to Maine. We had planned to stay at a favorite inn and I promised to make reservations in the next few days after Rob's cat scan was done. He had been having some pain in his chest and a chest x-ray showed a smudge that was thought to be artifactual. A day later, our doctor phoned, waking us up to tell Rob that he had cancer. I drove to pick up Dev from a friend's home and we then joined his father at the doctor's office.

There's no language I know that can suitably express the ways in which all of our lives have changed since that call.

No language.

None.

Woman in a Crowd (M.A. Reilly, 2015)

II.

During the last five months I have learned to respond to an onslaught of complications 24/7.  There is almost always a complication that Rob is faced with--complications that I have not anticipated and require response--often immediately. As Rob takes the necessary steps to battle not only the cancer but the many illnesses that have arisen alongside the cancer, the foundation that supports his efforts rests squarely in my hands.

Well intending friends and family ask if I'm taking care of myself and I realize that so often there is little self left and at other times there is a self I have not known that seems to be emerging.

I seem to have misplaced the woman I know I must have been. I'm writing this here as I don't want to forget this later--to gloss over it.  What gets lost and found is important.

This is at the center of loss.