The Voice without Words

When I got home from the hospital, I trudged out to the deck, mopped my nose and eyes with the overused tissue, and scoured the congested, grey sky for the slightest tinge of a rainbow. I should have known better. That’s far too cliché for Mom.

Mom was a daughter, sister, wife of 53 years, mother, step-mother, aunt, grandmother, great grandmother, and great-great grandmother. She worked in retail and manufacturing, but her talents went far beyond those skillsets. In her free time, she enjoyed cooking, baking, sewing, reading, visiting with family, gardening, farming, and building stone walls. Mom was an extraordinary storyteller, gifted writer, and published author. She had a sharp sense of humor that sometimes (or often) pushed boundaries, and her imagination and intellect were wildly uncommon. Her stoic exterior veiled a deeply sentimental nature, which became clear through the numerous bins of photos, clippings, and trinkets she kept. She loved being a mom. Her family was her life. And now it’s up to us to keep her memory alive.

I’ve heard others use the term larger than life (another cliché), but that doesn’t begin to capture the depth of her fierceness. When she had wrung every last microgram of strength from her physical form, her death unleashed a shockwave that vaporized everything I thought I understood about loss. What remained seemed a leaden ache of nothingness. An ink-black void that extinguished all light.

There are no words to describe Mom now. And I resist using another cliché – she passed on – to explain where she is. I prefer to say she rose above the form of life that had previously confined her. She now sees all and knows all. She is like a whirling dervish; an intelligent, higher frequency of energy that can animate any form.

In this moment she carries on in the tangerine and lemon-colored blooms of the marigolds she loved so much. And in the boisterous display of the Merganser, who bobs and turns, and lectures to me in a Rumi-esque style.  Wake up! You are complaining that you miss me. Yet here I am, calling while you sleep. Get up. Feel the cool dampness of the morning dew beneath your feet. Rest your eyes and listen to the master compositions of the Northern Mockingbird. Breathe in the sky. I am here. But you have to look differently to see me. You have to listen more intently to hear me. 

Yes. It was Rumi who said “There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.”
Her death has crushed my heart and scattered the pieces to the wind, but I’m listening. I watch the clusters of oak leaves rustle in the breeze and repeat what I’ve said to her so many times -- I love you, my beautiful mother.  

On a branch that bends high over the water I notice a pair of Baltimore Orioles constructing a nest. They are patient and selective in their choice of fragments and fibers, and weave them into an artistic, globe-shaped abode that hangs down like an ornament on a Christmas tree. They call to each other with a soothing, flute-like sound. 
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I sit down in Mom’s spot on the rocking bench, turn my face toward the sun, allow the tears to begin their work, and I listen.   
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