Of Mothers and Sisters and the End of a Life

I am autistic. I experience life and the world and relationships differently than neurotypical people. Sometimes I succeed in my life, at things large or small, and I go to sleep at night without regrets for missing the mark in some interaction or another. Sometimes I fail miserably and can’t sleep at all for the roiling mass of regrets at my mistakes, as if I’ve poured a vat of acid over my head and it’s eating away at me. Many people mistakenly believe that autistic people—because we don’t always show our emotions outwardly—are unempathetic or unfeeling.

That is not the case. I feel things deeply and they eat away at me, stripping one painful molecule at a time from my soul. This is one of those times.

***

I am a Buddhist. I began practicing Buddhism many years ago. The philosophy of mindfulness, the practice of walking lightly on the earth, the knowledge that all life matters, all of this resonated with truth in me. But I am a solitary practitioner. I find it difficult to belong to groups of any kind, even spiritual ones. Who I am is within me, not to be opened to others. I pass through the corporeal world like a ghost, invisibly, perhaps leaving behind a perfume crafted of meaningful words, of concern for other beings, of thoughts that might float into someone else’s mind and soul and bring a little joy or peace.

But I exist in a human body. Occupying such a carapace brings obligations and connections which I am not always the most competent at managing. I am blessed to have been born into a particular set of relationships, into a family, which—while providing many bad moments—has allowed me to progress spiritually, with the assistance of other beings who are working to grow as Bodhisattvas of the Earth, to progress upwards in their development.

This piece is about two of them:

My sister, who has been my rock, my shelter, not just in this life but in (possibly multiple) past lives.

And my mother, who has struggled tremendously in this lifetime, progressing in some ways, but constantly pulled back into negative currents which threaten to drown who and what she is.

And it is about my efforts to deal with and find growth in my relationships with these two women.

***

It would be impossible to tell you about the difficult and nuanced warp and weft which has woven my family together, both in this generation and in generations past (which, of course, color the people we all are). There has been struggle and strain, abuse and affection, joy and despair, all of the things which people everywhere deal with.

As someone who trades in words, allow me to create a metaphor for this:

My family is like an antique glass jar. Bits of the glass are clear, while others are scratched or pitted or clouded with the stresses of repeated use. There are chips around the rim, where something has hit the edge too hard and broken it away. But it remains more or less intact. Usable and useful. Beautiful in its own way, simply for surviving.

My family jar has held many things. Sometimes it was herbal tea, sun-brewed and sweetened with connection, with affection. Sometimes it was bitter ale, which had to be drained out and replaced with something more palatable. Sometimes it was fresh spring water, when we all needed to be washed clean and refreshed.

In recent years—as my sister and I have surfaced from the many tiny missteps of our earlier lives and come together as a force to be reckoned with in ways large and small—it has held strong coffee, to wake us up and calm our nerves and keep us alert to do the work of surviving to the end of this incarnation and moving on to the next one, where we have promised each other we will do better, for each other and for all of the other souls who share our journey.

And right now, we need to wash this family jar clean with great care, so that we can pass it on untainted by any dregs of the past that might remain, to the next generations.

***

My mother and father were very different people. Exploring the specifics would require a book the size of War and Peace, which would actually be a fairly good title. They divorced happily after twenty years of marriage. My father went on to meet and fall in love with a strong and devoted woman, to whom he was married for over thirty years. My mother had a series of less-than-ideal relationships before realizing that she was better off on her own.

When my father was in his last months and days—after the sudden death of my stepmother—my sister and I shared the honor of spending as much time with him as possible, to ease his transition. I cherish those weeks I was able to spend with him at his home in Florida, learning about his childhood and just being there at his side. I had never had the opportunity to know him as a person, with plans and dreams and experiences. Those days filled my family jar with gold-infused nectar.

My mother, on the opposite side of the coin, has held onto her bad childhood experiences with an iron fist, never learning how to release the neglect and anger and lack of love that colored her life. She remained an angry and bitter woman, especially towards her children, who were convenient targets for her resentments. To the outside world, she has always been sweet and kind and considerate. But to my sister and me—the only two of her six children to remain in close contact with her—she has been difficult to manage as she ages, to say the very least.

We try to overlook her rages, her backstabbing, her manipulation of our minds and emotions. We are dutiful (although not always patient) daughters, doing everything we can to keep her safe and content as she ages. In the last year or two, as she began showing definite signs of weakening with age, of diminished capacity for caring for all the nuances of her life, she has thankfully become less brittle. We still must treat her with kid gloves, and her rages are less frequent. I regret that her past actions have left me with a bitter taste, but I am trying my best to tamp those feelings down and deal with the human she is in this present moment.

I hope that I am succeeding, for her sake. She deserves to go forward into her next lifetime having gained ground in this one, and progressing in her spiritual development. Anything I can do to assist her in that endeavor is worth my momentary discomfort.

***

This brings me to the present.

My mother is failing. She was recently hospitalized with difficulty breathing and overall weakness. At the time of writing, she has been in the Emergency Department at our local small town hospital for six days, and was finally admitted to the rehab floor yesterday, for twenty days of occupational therapy, physical therapy, and (possibly) respiratory therapy, all of which is meant to enable her to come back to her home and live independently for the last weeks/months/years of her life. She is eighty-six. Her mother lived to one hundred and two. There’s no guessing how long she will remain in this lifetime, but we want her to be content and at peace while she is here with us.

I know that the many resentments she carries, abuses she suffered, and unresolved feelings she can’t lay down, weigh deeply on her soul. Throughout the years I have tried to awaken her to different spiritual paths which might bring her comfort, and have seen her open her mind and heart in small ways. But the deeper pains she carries have continued to underlie her progress.

I want to see her at peace before she passes on to her next plane of existence, whatever form that might take. Knowing the difficulties she has lived through, knowing how hard it is to heal when one has been hurt, it would be impossible not to feel compassion for her. But I also know that we can’t force someone to heal. Healing comes in its own time and space. All we can do is be open, to reach out a hand when someone needs a firm grip. To be there if she wants to grasp the fingers she no doubt held wrapped around hers when I was an infant, now that our roles are reversed.

***

My sister recently underwent a past-life regression, which shed a lot of light on her's and my present incarnations, and on our current relationship. I wonder if such a process might be of help in bringing my mother peace. Perhaps it would be helpful, or perhaps it’s just too late for such an intervention. I suppose that in the months to come it might be something to offer when she feels stronger. I would love to see her find the peace that knowledge of one’s soul’s deepest experiences brings.

We are all here to learn and grow. That will have to wait, however.

The most important thing I can do for my mother now is to be there for her, in whatever way she needs. To bring her peace in small increments. To ignore the ways she continues trying to pit my sister and me against each other. That is simply who she is, who she was taught to be by her own mother. I will care for her regardless, for the sake of this enormously convoluted soul-tree which I am a part of.

I will pour a cup of sweet tea from my family jar, a cup of steaming hot chocolate, a glass of sparkling elderflower pressé, and drink it slowly, with gratitude. And I will spit out the dregs of sour ale, of bitter melon juice, and look at the beautiful souls of the next generation of my family, those who haven’t been as terribly poisoned by the past.

I may not have brought any of them into this world, but they are my hope.