Dear Friend,
Had she lived, today would be our Mam’s eightieth birthday.
She was so cool.
What made her so, I don’t think Mam bought much into the idea of being someone.
I was listening to an interview with Carl Jung last night as I drifted into sleep.
He’s not so easy to understand. Each word from the old master cloaked in his heavy Swiss accent, a drop of rain in the desert. You have to concentrate.
He was clarifying the idea of persona, the roles we play and how we mistake them for who we are.
Mam wasn’t heavily identified with a persona. Didn’t get swept away. She would be right there with you, no matter what was going on.
“It’s only me” she’d say by way of greeting. For most of my adult life, a voice on the phone, occasional visits. Christmas. Sometimes a crisis or a show.
There were times I was so ashamed of the way I ran from our home.
In my late teens and early twenties I was running from the idea I’d created of me. I’d never heard of Carl Jung, would have taken him for a madman. I had no clue how my mind functioned. Whatever thought appeared became the truth, simply because I thought it.
I was a lost boy.
Mam’s humble greeting would needle me. I thought she should be more assertive. My generation had been exposed to neoliberal ideology as if were nature, human nature. We had to be competitive to win the game. Toxic nonsense. Making something of ourselves. Always not quite there.
We have to go through it. The suffering turns us around eventually. I’ll speak for myself. Turned me around to look for another way.
Mam was there already. Present. Accepting. Gentle. Kind. Curious. Light hearted. Generous. Content to be in the moment. She wouldn’t talk about it like that. She’d tell you about the birds and the plants and the neighbouring children.
Read her detective novels and look out the window.
If she had opinions about the people in our lives, she kept them to herself. Even celebrities were treated like human beings in Mam’s world.
She had her frustrations, just like we all do, but they’d pass. We were lucky me and my brother. We never felt judged. We were the ones doing the judging. We wished she’d stand up to Dad’s moody demands, push back a bit. But that wasn’t her way.
Who’s to say what’s right or wrong for a loved one? She knew Dad better than us. They’d met when they were fourteen. Married by nineteen, Mam had lost both her parents by her early twenties.
Oddly, this is the eightieth post, on what would be her eightieth birthday.
A synchronicity giving cause for pause.
“Don’t be silly Michael.”
I can hear her when I make myself still.
“No need for regrets.”
I slow down, make time to look out of the window and breathe. I call her in my mind. She visits from the astral world. Sometimes just a brief stop by to say hello. The way a robin will pause on a branch and flap its wings to get your attention before darting away into the blue.
“It’s only me.”
It hurts to be parted, is healing to realise connections can be remade.
There is so much more to our world than our culture allows for.
We’ve become materialists. Rich in goods, impoverished in spirit, we suffer.
Becoming still, we exercise our free will to be ourselves.
We are as free as before we were born. The roles we play are not who we are.
Mam’s name was Sheila Mary. We miss her. Tears mixing with the sunshine of her memory make rainbows. All the colours that you bring.
She’s here with me now as I write.
I’ll put the kettle on, maybe later we’ll go for a walk.
The sun is shining.
I’ll wear my sunglasses. There’ll be rainbows.
Wear the roles you play while you do your thing, but don’t believe you have to be anything other than yourself.
We are free, even if our culture wishes us to believe otherwise.
Peace is real.
And love never dies.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey
❤️