MOMMY, I MISS YOU

mommy.
I didn’t think i’d say this but: I miss you.

It’s weird because you were severely ill for seventeen years of my life. I only knew you from my age 0~17 and those first few years don’t count becauase I don’t remember. You started getting sick at my age of seventeen, when you were only forty-seven. Through my twenties you lost spacial recognition, long-term memory, then short-term memory. Not only could you not call my name, you couldn’t look me in the eye anymore. I wondered a million times if “you,” the consciousness that makes “you,” still recognized me. 

 

Then one Christmas, many years after you’d been in a full-body wheelchair, couldn’t eat or use the restroom on your own; long after you’d called my name or had any form of communication, when my sister & I played your favorite Christmas carol on repeat, the miracle happened.

Piercingly, you shouted, “Ra-pum-pum-pum!” to The Little Drummer Boy.

We burst into tears. Then we knew. We knew “you” were still in there.

A few years after that and seven long years after doctors’ prognosis had predicted the end of your life according to statistics of neurological illness, we got the call.

You were close.

We flew to be by your side, in your room in the facility near the tranquil Seto-inland seas of Japan.

And then … you chose me.

Though there were no words, I “heard” your intention. “Come near me,” you said.

As I sat next to your head and stroked you, you took your very gentle last.

I’m a yoga teacher, mom.

I have watched, listened, attended to, and guided people breathe their way to greater health and Life for more than half of my life now.

For you, I had the honor of witnessing your last.

Beautiful woman.

You were ill for half of my life until you passed at my age of 34.

I didn’t get to know you as a person beyond the messy-but-powerful mother that you were to me for the first half of my life.

But why is it that I feel like I know “you” better than anybody ever did?

It’s because through you, I learned to listen to and pay heed to the Consciousness of “you.”

And this Grace, I swear, I will pass on to All Whom I Love.

I want you to know, I still miss you.

I’m your “chibi (littlest-one)” FOREVER.

Written on Mother’s Day, May 12th 2024, in eternal appreciation for Revlon Russell (1950~2014).