Being Away...

I have been away. I have been away from this world in every respect except for that which required me to help my Mom. I suppose anyone who has ever faced death with a loved one must have felt the same way?



I have spent the last year helping my Mom fight leukemia and eventually, helping her to succumb to it. She faced her death with courage, refusing further treatments and wanting to remain at home to die surrounded by the people and the treasures that she loved. She created a beautiful home and wanted to remain within its comforts to die.

It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.

I have been away for all the right reasons. Now, I welcome myself back to my life without the physical presence of my Mom, but she is with me.

I find great comfort in this quote taken from Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a book that my mother treasured along with all of the beautiful shells she had collected from life's beach...

"Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It is like an amputation, I feel. A limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done, I find there is a quality to being alone that is incredibly precious.

Life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid, fuller than before. It is as if in parting one did actually lose an arm. And then, like the star-fish, one grows it anew; one is whole again, complete and round--more whole, even, than before, when the other people had pieces of one."