There was a moment in Mummy’s physical fading where she looked at me one uneventful afternoon from her hospital bed and said ‘I loved you.’
‘Loved’.
She looked at me like she wasn’t here anymore… she was already somewhere else… her Soul had gone there to that place and come back again as if it had forgotten something and in this moment her Soul returned to pick it up - like picking up the car keys. Fleetingly, she suddenly recognised someone standing opposite her… someone she loved… purely. Totally.
It was simple. It was galactic. It was everything… the words ‘I loved you’.
She left, lived a hundred more lifetimes, returned and remembered this life, vaguely… all in a heartbeat. She was in both worlds… for a moment… there and here… and I was witnessing it. Though, I wasn’t ‘Lara’ to her. I wasn’t ’daughter’ or ‘babe’ or ‘beauty’ ‘madam’ ‘darling’ ‘wretch’… I too was a Soul she saw and recognised.
Soul to Soul.
‘I loved you’.
She came back again, eventually… in this ‘Barbara’ ‘Mama’ shell…
Fading fast because her Soul was ready to go actually… and that’s why her body was shrinking. She was outgrowing it… like the butterfly.
I was spooked. The Knowing part of me deep deep down was fully aware of what was happening. And yet every conscious human part of me was screaming ‘I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT YOU!!!! YOU CANNOT LEAVE ME!!!! I WILL NOT LET YOU!!!!!!!!!’
And I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger Mummy… I’m sorry I didn’t say ‘you can let go’… I could never have… to be strong enough to say ‘you can let go now Mummy’…..
… I would have clung to you forever.
I would have left with you.
Is that why you left when I went away to the mountains for a few days? Finally you had some space to let your Soul fly free? Alone.
That almighty departure… grace of God.
Maybe one day our Souls will meet again. Vaguely remembering a time when we were once Mother & Daughter. Barbara & Lara.
Knowing ‘I loved you’.
