My mother’s death felt, for a long, long time, like the death of everything.

For every good and worthy thing in me, even my life, came from her life-spring.

She taught me how, with words, to know things, and to keep learning more.

She taught me by her actions, kind and caring, how to care and be kind;

She taught me by loving me, so unconditionally, how to love.

Now she has passed through what I once heard called “God’s other door”—

As if birth and death were simple doors we pass through, below and above.

Birth to life we know.  Death we cannot know.  Life sees life; but to death is blind,

Absolutely blind, to darker than living blindness--past the black last barrier.

There is only one true death for each of us; and that, for each of us, is our own.

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I can love another person passionately, deeply, even infinitely:

Yet mine is the only me I have.

For all others I love, I have to say: I love you.

Only of myself can I say: I love me.

Even if I love you more than I love myself, I still have only my own one me.

Just as you have only your own one me.

There is one death, one only, for each of us: we each must die one death, alone.

Thousands of graveyards whirling with the spinning world; but, for each of us,

There is only one all-swallowing grave.

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I would have died a thousand deaths to save my mother;

I still would—to bring her back—

Without one second of hesitation for all that I would lose and lack--

But still, inescapably, despite my desperate tears, her death for me was other—

It proved to be a terrible, terrible loss for me, and grieved me terribly;

And I was--I am--fully willing, with all my wasted worth, to die instead of her.

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But still her death could not be death for me. 

It gave me no inkling into that dark eternity.

For when we had buried her, the stars were still twinkling for me.

The air I was breathing in and out of my lungs was still flowing fresh and free.

Oranges still tasted like oranges; roses still gave me flower-scented air.

Sleep gave me dreams; and waking wrought the real world: for I was still there.

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Written by Michael LP, aka MLP, aka Mr. Poet
Written on Monday, June 29, 2009  2:50 pm
Temperature:  107 degrees F.   Winds: 1 MPH
Copyright © 2010 by Michael L.P.  All rights reserved