“Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.” from Rainy Days and Mondays, Carpenters, 1971 album
I wish I could empirically know if it is my mother’s spirit that I feel in certain moments like this morning when I heard her voice inside me say “what a rainy day,” as I looked out over the tiny garden this morning.
Her voice came unbidden. I wasn’t thinking about her in that moment, but I’ve been thinking of her since.
Are there gardens wherever she is – if she’s anywhere at all anymore?
There must be gardens, because she’d create one.
Doesn’t all our creativity speak to something beyond us? We dream, and plan, and build. We create worlds within worlds – aquariums of fish sometimes replete with real or plastic plants, old time scuba outfitted people, little plastic treasure chests, or practical items like miniature caves or structures where the fish can swim through or hide.
There’s Biosphere II in Oracle, Arizona – a town I once briefly lived in – where a dreamer designed and built a sustainable living environment for when we have thoroughly trashed this one (as we seem unable to stop ourselves from doing).
My mother was curious about everything. She pondered life’s mysteries, and whether we continually recycle into flesh beings – or whatever forms we might take in an endlessly diverse universe.
I could and did talk to her about anything, and while I still have my scholarly and philosophical friend who also ponders the extraordinary, and the mundane, my mother’s voice is silenced except for memories, and a few video and audio recordings.
But maybe her voice isn’t silenced. Maybe consciousness resides outside the body. Maybe my mother has just changed form, and carries all that she gained from being on Earth with her – willing her thoughts into my brain once in a while?
It’s frustrating that I can’t know for sure, and it feels like searching for the roots of truth in mythology.
I once read that God(dess) is an “unknowable essence,” but has sent, and will send, messengers throughout all time to tell the rest of us why we exist, and what It hopes from us.
My mother once read me some other sage’s words: “Why do you seek God(dess)? Does a fish seek water?” I don’t know the author of those words, but they often sustain me.
I sense my mother’s smile and encouragement too, and that will have to suffice.
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© seekingsearchingmeaning (aka Hermionejh), Making A Way Blog, 2010 – current
I like to think Aunt Doe is around you always, and giving you messages like you described. I always wonder about this subject to, Jer. Love ya! Jess
I mean “too”!
lol – I didn’t even notice!
Thank you Jessie! I miss you lots and hope to see you at the family party in August, or we’ll have to find a time & place otherwise. xo
I can relate to this, Jerri.
I agree with this piece, but for me it’s not only a search through mythology – it’s also a search through myself, in terms of what feels most true to me… I’m slowly learning to trust that too.
Yours,
David
Thank you for commenting, David. I’m sorry I responded with Ben as your first name before!
I am doing my best to believe or accept that there is point to life, especially because it is so short and seems incomprehensible to me that this is all there is.
I keep trying to remain open, or cultivate what a friend described as a ‘don’t know mind’. That’s where trust or belief in some greater purpose comes in, I suppose.
Peace, Jerri
I also try to maintain a “don’t know mind” – I’m open to experiencing something that suggests to me that there’s something more to the world that what I have experienced so far… but, for me, that doesn’t mean that I’ve yet to personally experience anything that suggests the possibility of the supernatural… and if I’m being entirely honest with myself, I’m doubtful that I ever will. 🤷♂️
-David