TIME TRAVEL

I used to love August.
In our youth, a teacher at my high school had a tradition with her brother. No matter how far apart they were they chose a singular day and celebrated it as their own.
As my sister and I parted countries decades ago on our separate paths to our personal futures we agreed to our own day, August 12th which would be ours. We called it Chocolate Day and resigned to send each other something magically chocolate from wherever in the world we were at that moment in time. We both got pleasure for years in sending unique chocolate items to each other.
Last year though, August became tarnished for me.
It is a month I have not looked forward to now for 11 months.

August the 25th 2013, was perhaps the last happy day of my life,  a day I never remembered, due to the events 24 hours later.
If I could travel back in time I would return to 25th August, 2013 and live it like no other.

My mother passed away on 26th August 2013, (she officially passed a few days later but technicalities need not be explained).
While the life support supporting her dragged fiercely to hold her in this world, death pulled harder to have her join the next.
I have seen the moments of her death and she passed, without doubt on the 26th.
Life support was not even a reality.
Few people get to see video evidence of the moment their loved ones pass away, for that, I must truly be in a very small minority of people who have.
I’m glad I did. It made her passing a little easier, even if much more painfull.

Living on the other side of the world to her, it would have been harder to understand her passing and cremation before I got home a few days after on August 28th. Having no one to touch nor to kiss, nor to hug nor just to see and say good bye too, was hard enough, but being given the opportunity to see the moments before and after her stroke in a public place, gave me a sense of being there, an angels view of her passing, so to speak.

My mothers death is one of the toughest things the world has thrown at me in my 45 years. And I have seen my share of “things”.

While it is said that no parent should outlive their children, there are days I wish I had not outlived my mother. She was a ‘pure’ soul on a planet becoming less pure by the second.
As a son who was very close to his mother, I have struggled to maintain my sanity these past 12 months. I wish a higher power had taken me instead, it would have made more sense. My mother did so much good for the world, the community and for others. She reached out beyond her own country and knitted madly for children in far away lands, so that their little hands, feet and heads would not be cold. I would love to know how far afield my mothers woolen kitted goods had travelled, for some of it surely saw reaches of the world my mother only ever dreamt of exploring.
In comparison I have done so little in my life for others. Sure I have fed numerous thousands and have been read my thousands more, but have I done good, I doubt it.

Twelve months on, I can attest that the days are more bearable; the tears flow less, but still as hard when the moment strikes and the moment still strikes often and  when least expected.
But time does soothe the stinging pain of loss, nothing though can ever remove the stinging pain all together. It remains with you wherever you go and what ever you do.
A flower, a bird chirp, the smell of a particular perfume, a bar of soap, a person resembling her frame, a song, a movie or the passing of a particular star or celebrity, all reminders of the dearest woman I am ever likely to know.

A few days after my mother died I returned home to try and get on with the rest of my life, I was, I believe visited by her in my dreams.
The first night home as a slept, I dreamt I was walking through a mall.
I saw my mother looking lost, when I called her name she hugged me and was so happy to see me when I went over too her. I could not believe it was her, having just returned from her passing, I was confused and in the confusion forgot to ask questions of her I wish I had the cognitive awareness to have spoken. Instead my disbelief of seeing her, froze my senses and tongue.
I told her I loved her so much, she told me too that she loved me too. As we hugged she felt frail and asked to sit for a moment, and there before me she passed away one more time. This time with a smile and whisper that she would miss me.

And then she was gone, again.
It was a nice way to say goodbye, even if only in my dreams.
I felt I was truly with her in her last moments and somehow that I had comforted her, and she me.
I awoke streaming tears down my face, as I do again now just tapping the words before me.

If only I could go back to the 25th August 2013 and call her that afternoon before she left home and scream down the phone lines that I loved her so much and that I do not want to live in a world where she is not.
The world would not be perfect, but it would go some ways to calm a stinging pain of loss that rips my heart open on occasions like this.
For some people time travel would mean money, better fortune, grander adventures and more connections, for me it would just mean one more chance to hear her voice, her laugh and the words I miss the most, “I love you son”

I can come to terms I think with the fact that death comes to us all, but I just wish we had a clue as to when. We could better plan for it, say our good byes and be at rest with the facts. The unknowing, the uncertainty, the sudden tragic stinging pain and heartache of loss is the punch that ruins us, and turns our lives on its head.

I will never be the same man I was before 26th August 2013 and I will never be a loving son to a wonderful mother ever again. Time just does not heal all wounds.

My mother was not buried, I have no pilgrimage to make each year to plant flowers or to tell her I love her.  In a singular week in 2013 I went from telling her that I loved her, to having her wiped clean from the planet as she died and was cremated before I had the chance to return home.
If she had been lain to rest, I would have had the following carved into her head stone or memorial plaque.

Mark Twain wrote the eulogy for his daughter and I first heard them in an episode of an eighties TV show, Quantum Leap, at that time I cried for the loss of a young friend who had suicided, today the following verse is for someone far closer.

Warm summer sun, 

     shine brightly here, 

Warm Southern wind, 

     blow gently here, 

Green grass above, 

     lie light, lie light, 

Good night, dear heart; 

     good night, good night.

To my mother; Margaret Ann Maree. 

17th May 1940 - 28th August 2013

(My mothers life was in part defined by the loss of the WILLWATCH, a 96 ton ketch seen here in an old photo. It sank in heavy seas on 17th December 1958 when my mother was 18 years old and worked in the local marine office. The loss of all five men from a vessel she had seen leave port and the 2 hours of radio commentary given by Skipper George "Mac" McCarthy as his boat floundered and then sank with the loss of all aboard, haunted her for the rest of her days. ) I will write about the WILLWATCH in an upcoming blog, among a return to food, after a years absence.