Mother and Child

E146: We grieve because we had and we held

Mother and Child

©Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges, photo Karena de Souza

“Inside this church is one of Brugge's treasures,” said our amazing guide Peter, “our very own Michelangelo. The only statue to have left Italy in his lifetime.” When I gaze on The Madonna of Bruges¹, I wonder how Michelangelo was able to get marble to drape and hands to hold. As I admire his work of this Mother enjoying her young child I remember the Pieta in the Vatican — a Mother holding her dying son — which sits at the opposite end of her mothering journey.

Mourning does not have a timetable

“In the land of grief, mourning does not have a timetable.
The only thing it requires of us is that we learn to absorb the loss,
remember our loved ones and learn to live well in spite of our losses.”
— Keanu Reeves

Grief continues to confound me since my mother’s passing. It is hard to believe it has only been four months. I find solace in poems and quotes. And stone.

These mesmerizingly beautiful statues remind me of the special bond between a mother and her child. It transcends all dimensions, and all of Time. The present pain can be intense. But it is because the joy, pleasure, and privilege of being her child was just as intense.

Right now I’m in a different place
And though we seem apart
I’m closer than I ever was,
I’m there inside your heart.

I’m with you when you greet each day
And while the sun shines bright
I’m there to share the sunsets, too
I’m with you every night.

I’m with you when the times are good
To share a laugh or two,
And if a tear should start to fall
I’ll still be there for you.

And when that day arrives
That we no longer are apart,
I’ll smile and hold you close to me,
Forever in my heart.

– Anonymous

Take a photo

Your mission for this week: Take a photo with your mother. 

We never know when we will no longer have that opportunity.²

None of us is born with our expiry date tattooed on our [rump]
— paraphrasing Mike Funk who died at the tender age of 26

I have over 10,500 photos on my camera, many of my mother with my siblings, with my children, with her brothers and sisters.
And so few of me with her. 

You could wait. But why?

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See you again next week.
Karena

Dateline: London, UK

Brooke Smith

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Emma Dorge

and Ilona thank you for your support this week.

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Other essays that discuss living and embracing life fully, crafting our live to appreciate time with our loved ones:

The Gift of Time: Finding those Precious Pockets with your Parents

Give them the best of you, not the rest of you.

If death were to meet me tomorrow

1. Brugge in Flemish, Bruges in French

2. From

An awful, strange, and bittersweet space

“With everyone, we hold on to our memories of them until we get to see them again and then we make new memories. With the deceased, there aren’t opportunities to make new memories so we can only hold onto the ones we already made.”