That moment when you are bare, when you have nothing else to give, when the walls are closing around you. When everything you believe in, every milestone you marked, means nothing. When you are about to lose your foundation and you lie bare in all your awful and selfish thoughts and all that you would never were, but could have been.
All that you are, with all the lumps, with all of the triumphs and with all of the shortcomings. And it is not your time to answer for your life. But, almost. It is your mother’s reckoning, which is also in that weird mother-daughter/sister-woman way, a referendum on you. It is titled, “Mom’s day with G-d’ but it is the start of your days piecing together her legacy, to you, to your children and to the world. And, oh, yeah, to your siblings and your father.
But a mother’s death is principally a demarcation in the relationship with her mother and her daughters. And the dialogue doesn’t end with death. Not even the heated ones.
The joke that your arms are too short to box with G-d is all about how you can’t land a left hook, but your mother has arms so long she can reach your most tender places at will. Yes, Heaven (or Hell) has a huge advantage over us mortals. Take the punches, but wear boxing gear.
The judgments don’t end. They just have this $1.99 halo attached to it. Don’t be fooled.
But be humbled. A life, perhaps unfulfilled, has ended.
And it is not your job to fulfill that life. Each life must be lived by the owner.
But it is your job to pick up the part of the legacy that you can advance. Not fulfil. Don’t think about fulfilling. Just embody it forward.
It may be achieved in your child’s extended hand to a friend that evolved into her changing the world.
But every moment is not a success or failure. In fact, only with the passage of time, and the graying of your life, will you know whether you advanced your mother’s mission or, in fact, healed the world a little, in spite of your mother.
Life is a journey and death a destination and, if we are lucky enough, we leave a legacy of love, grace and healing.
And today, it is time to redouble our efforts, for our own mothers and for the mothers of our friends who have fallen recently.
May they rest in peace and their memories be blessings for us all.
