Legacy.

When my mother died, I felt as if loss had taken my heart and torn a piece from it, leaving a core wound, a quiet bleeding. The sorrow would swell like a wave that I couldn’t dive under or over. My tears would fall, and I became so used to them, I didn’t wipe them away. I just let them make their way down to my heart.
Iris was a woman of small stature, with strength, fierceness, and fighting, and she refused to be a story of someone else’s making. She was the phoenix that rose again and again until she finally could not. We share a voice and a laugh, and most recently, I have discovered I now sneeze like her! I am myself, and yet I also carry her legacy in our shared values, beliefs, and in the work that I do.
Standing in the world without my mother still feels raw, I miss our conversations, her affectionately calling me an idiot whenever I shared a silly story. I miss that she is no longer cheering me on but maybe she is. Maybe in a crossing of places and universes she is there still. Sometime after she died, there also came a release from the intensity of seven years of caring, which slowly slid into the rear-view mirror. An ending to the illnesses, loss of function and capacity that she hated. And I could imagine her saying, “Get back out there!” to life. I am of her, and I am also the person she helped me to become. She is alive in my living.

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