My mother has effectively departed.
My sister and step-father had called the week before to come quickly because Mom was deteriorating rapidly and had gone into the hospital. I flew out to Miami and arrived Wednesday a week ago and immediately went to see Mom with my sister Jeanne.
Mom was lying there in the hospital bed looking frail. When I went over to her she smiled. "Jimmy," she said. She could hardly speak, and was drifting in and out of consciousness.
Over the next two days, my step-father Al and Jeanne and I and some other close family friends watched my Mom go downhill. She was barely conscious and could no longer see or eat or sit up or even swallow water. The slightest sound or touch would send her into spasms of panicky, violent and very painful shaking.
The nurses would have to turn her in order to change her bedding, and I would stroke her hair and ask her to look into my eyes while the pain was the worst. That was the least of it; everyone did everything they could. Still she went down. The doctors couldn't figure out what was happening.
By Thursday night my Mom had ceased to exist as a mentally-functioning human being. She could no longer speak nor recognise anybody or anything. She was gone.
In bafflement, an MRI was called for. For it, Mom had to be absolutely still for 15 minutes, which was impossible. So she was given a type of sleeping pill to make her completely still for the MRI. Within half an hour, Mom was heavily asleep and went into the big magnetic imaging machine.
The results came back later that day. Everything in her brain was normal, according to the MRI. Meanwhile, Mom was lost now in another world. At least Mom was sleeping until the sedative given for the MRI wore off.
My sister and i went out to dinner that night and acknowleged to each other that for all practical purposes Mom was gone. When we went back to the hospital, Mom was still sleeping deeply. In all, she slept 20 hours that day and night.
The next morning, when we went to her room she drifted into consciousness suddenly. and greeted everyone! "Hi, sweetheart," she said. She looked around as if nothing had happened. She puckered her lips. She wanted to kiss everybody! And did!
My sister and I looked at each other. You have to understand, my Mom had turned into quite the sweet old lady over the years, but nothing like this! She smiled at everything! Everything! She had gone to the other side and looked death in the face—and something had changed!
At one point Al and my sister and I were maneuvering Mom a few feet away onto the toilet (she said she wanted to go sitting up). This was a formidable exercise since my Mom was still incredibly weak.
She sat there on the toilet completely bereft of what we usually think of as any dignity—and just smiled at everybody! She puckered her lips! She wanted to kiss us! The situation didn't matter! Mom had found out in the core of her being what really mattered!
That day my Mom became enlightened. In one day, she became my teacher, my guru, sitting there on the toilet.
That night I went home and lay on the bed in the guest room of my sister's home and stared at the light in the ceiling. Something broke inside of me and I began to cry, not because my Mom was back, but because of something much greater, something that she had taught us that day.
And I realized that nothing at all in this world matters except what Mom was pointing to that day. All the things that I think are so damn important are like nothing, like dust in my hand. Only love is important.
And I realized, too, that I was a total idiot. I knew I was a complete idiot because I realized I knew nothing at all. I didn't know what was good or bad, or how things were supposed to work, or how my life was supposed to go, or what direction the world was supposed to go in or anything at all about anything at all.
I lay there in absolute ignorance, and looked around me at everyday objects as if I were seeing them for the first time. Everything was filled with the infinite. I heard the wind rustling through the leaves outside and the sound felt like angels singing. The ordinary is divine. The divine is hidden in the ordinary moment.
I realized again that except for what Mom was pointing to, nothing at all mattered. Whatever I thought was important just didn't matter. Sure I would go on doing whatever it is I do. But I knew deep down, again, that nothing at all matters except love.
What is this mysterious force that pervades us, that even the worst wars and tragedies and holocausts cannot kill in us? What is this love that is at the core of us? What is it?
I submit to you that it's nothing less than the ungraspable itself, expressing its divine essence through us as us. Whenever we extend a hand to another, that is the infinite extending its hand. Whenever we smile at another, that is the infinite smiling. Whenever love is born in our hearts, that is the infinite being born again, able to see itself truly.
Whenever we see that everyone is doing the very best they know how—aren't you?—that is the infinite seeing that fact too. Whenever we appreciate the beauty of life in the midst of its pains and its travails, that is the infinite appreciating life—which is itself. That is life loving itself. That is the non-locatable, the infinite ungraspable, using this oh-so-human! circuitry to realize itself.
Mom has gone downhill again now and is no longer here mentally. Yet her beautiful spirit, manifesting itself so radiantly that day, lives on in my heart. What she taught me, and what she saw, lives on.
—jim sloman, 3/24/01 for Mar 24
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