Grief to Gratitude

By Sherrie Cassel

As my older brother riffled through our dead mother’s belongings, I sat and waited for his assault on my mother’s last belongings to be over. Her calendar of her days, when each of her children visited or she spoke with us on the phone were priceless items I could not part with . My mother had a cheap plaster Virgen Guadalupe that I asked for from my siblings. No one wanted it. I kept some of her notes she wrote, and a couple of robes I could cling to in the early days following her death.

After my brother finished packing up his booty, my younger brother and I were left with clean up, which was substantial. She had just been cleared of breast cancer, after a mastectomy, at 83 years old. She wasn’t supposed to die after such a victory for our family. I guess when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go, and it was hers. The last few years of her life, after our father died, she thrived, even despite her physical limitations. She always dressed her best and had smiles for each of her children. When we lost my son, she lost her only grandchild, and the grief never left her, just as it will never leave me – in this lifetime.

I had a tempestuous relationship with my mother. We were so different. She was also abusive to her children; she also dealt with mental illness. Everyone in my family does. Despite the abuse of withdrawal of love or a full physical assault, I loved my mother. Trauma bonding is very real. Sometimes, and I don’t know who is blessed or cursed with this ability, we romanticize our parents or others who may have abused us. I know my mother was imperfect, as am I; she tried on her good days to be a great mom, and there were days, just as I was, when she was a good mother. Those who come from abusive backgrounds have conflicted relationships with their abusers.

I don’t know why I maintained my love for my mother, but I did. Perhaps, the reason is because of a deeply embedded Christian ethic; you know, forgiveness is big in the Christian doctrine (well, the one that the archetype of Jesus advocated for – forgiveness and wiping the dust off our feet). I understand my parents, and maybe, because forgiveness is a process, I extend forgiveness and then I take it back. Again, the relationship, was dysfunctional from the day I was conceived to the day my mother died, I loved my mother, and I always sought her approval, and sometimes she was able to give it to me. She didn’t have the emotional resources to always “be” there for us. She could be loving and then ten minutes later, she’d be shaming or hitting us.

Which brings me to interesting metaphors; like a double-edged sword, metaphors can cut to the quick or inspire us to moments of clarity and states of pure and extraordinary lucidity as we pare away toxic ideology and toxic people. The mental/spiritual phenomenon/a of achieving clarity is a magical, sometimes scary experience. In my opinion, being lucid in a moment of clarity can be transcendent, launching you from a place of stagnation into the most dynamic life you can imagine.

I know.

Astrologers and psychic folx have me pegged as a Gemini, one who is double-minded, i.e., taking forever to make a decision because she can see both sides of the coin. Who ~doesn’t~ have that ability? Someone for whom healthy decision-making skills were not modeled may not have the requisite trust in herself to make wise decisions. Or the alternative is true; someone for whom healthy decision-making skills were modeled would behave accordingly when making decisions, “twins” or not. I’ve also been told by my energy working friends that Libras take forever to make a decision; hence, the scales are symbolic of trying to balance the truth…good luck with that.

Anyhow, metaphors.

I didn’t ask for much from my mother’s belongings. My younger brother and I were interested in things with her handwriting. I took her ChapStick, silly tokens of Mom’s last few days, things that were specific to my mother’s daily life. We each grieve differently.

There was a spoon Mom used to cook with, a wooden one. She had that same spoon as far back as my memories go. Mom was a fantastic cook. My parents were from Texas, so we ate a lot of Tex-Mex food. She loved being a mother; she tried. But back to the spoon; as lovely as I remember her cooking for us, lovingly, always justifiably proud of her meals, also, always on a tight budget, she used that wooden spoon to hit us – on the head, on the backs of our legs, basically, wherever it would land.

Why would I want such a thing? I guess, we, or at least I, received from my mother one of the good coping skills: Pollyannaism; and one of my father’s gifts was a keen sense of wonder, oh yeah, and a large dose of cynicism; but I guess inherited behaviors can also become restrictive and oppressive. Mom also shared her steely and caustic tongue with each of her kids. Some of us used it more effectively, and more meanly than the others in my family. Unfortunately, words … are my wooden spoon, lovingly creative, or targeted missiles. I no longer shoot for the latter.

The death of my son changed me, made me softer. My husband’s heart attack awakened me to how temporary and random life is. My seminary experience changed me. I choose to use my wooden spoon to blend the ingredients of you and me, with a smidge of him or her or they, with healthy coping skills, including the prosocial behavior of compassion. I no longer need a wooden spoon for anything other than creating beautiful and communal spaces for those with whom I come into contact. If I’m lucky, I’ll live as long as my mother. Mom tried to make up for her imperfection later in her life.

Her behavior was all about survival – and when you’re using all your emotional resources to just make it through each day, you don’t have the resources of love, empathy, compassion, or insight into someone else’s life. I get it now. Do I forgive? I don’t know. I’m slowly letting go of the anger and bitterness I had for my father; it’s almost gone. See, I don’t know where you come from, heaven, hell, or limbo (stagnant life), but healing is possible.

We each have a wooden spoon, our double-edged sword, or like an oar that steers us toward a beautiful shore or tossed about on the rocks of despair and discontent, where we are living towards dying, without hope.

I was able to walk away with a note my mother wrote to the God of her understanding. The note said, “God, please don’t let me hurt my children.” I took it as an apology for all the times she was out of her mind from fear, rage, mental illness, and avenging her childhood on her children.

She loved me and I know this. Despite the fact we were often at odds with each other, I know she loved me. Mom was a hardcore, kind of fundamentalist Christian, with modifications for her gay children who she adored, and a daughter who wouldn’t behave until she was thirty-five. Mom prayed for us incessantly. She prayed for us out of her love. Prayer was on the kind side of the wooden spoon. I still to this day appreciate the prayers or good juju said and sent by others. Do they work? I don’t know (she said irritated). But I appreciate them nonetheless; the mere intention shows me people care.

I know I’m not mad at my mother anymore. She gave me some good things too, i.e., ladybugs, butterflies, perennial flowers, and she gave me life. My mother was my wooden spoon; she created out of love, and she struck out because she was broken. If I’d been a perfect mother perhaps, I wouldn’t cut her so much slack. But who’s perfect? Who does it consistently right every time? No one. Not my mother. Not you. And certainly not I.

Hurt people hurt people, with words or with wooden spoons, in whatever form they come to us. As I write this, I’m full of love and understanding for my mother. Some days I have the energy to think rationally and so my pot of gold at the end of my rainbow is freedom from lingering anger, fear, woundedness, pain. You name it; all sorts of neuroses emerge from the dysfunctions of domestic violence, sexual assault, unhealthy social influences, ad nauseam.

I laid down my wooden spoon; I don’t need it anymore. I prefer the electric mixer anyhow; it blends all the ingredients into one blended whole, a whole where we are not separate from one another. I prefer the newer metaphor, more modern, fewer memories of dually-edged challenging parentage, confusing, conflicting, and compassionless –.

I haven’t relinquished Mom’s wooden spoon. Perhaps the vestiges of the poor coping skill are conduits for lingering masochism; I hurt myself and others for a number of years, until I got medicated and was able to learn to trust the world enough to lay down my wooden spoon.

My best friend in high school, used to say when people were jerks (in high school the boys were relentless), “Kill them with kindness.” I was too angry from all the ways the wooden spoon had been used against me, kindness? Why? Who extended kindness to me? Well, decades later, I see the value of the saying.

Kindness is always better than conflict; since therapy and since medication, I now see that love really ~is~ the answer. I’m lovable. I’m worthy of love. We are worthy of the good side of the wooden spoon. We are worthy enough to free ourselves from our own wooden spoons that come to us in the forms of causticity, hypervigilance, ad infinitum. I love the quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., apropos of his birthday, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we’re free at last.” Abuse is oppression, and we are imprisoned in that oppressive climate until we have that moment of lucid clarity and set ourselves free. Elsa from Frozen (yes, I saw it.) sings a song, “Let it go.” The Buddha reminds us to let go because all things are transitory. St. Augustine said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” I was an angry lass before therapy and my lucid clarity (said in an Irish brogue).

Life is so much lovelier without hanging on to the brokenness my parents passed down to their children. I suppose I’ll heal from the polar opposite purposes for my mom’s wooden spoon. That’s my goal anyhow…it’s a lifelong process. Anger and rage use energy that would be better used for healing yourself, your relationships, your mind, and your soul.

Anger poisoned me and my relationships for decades. So, I laid down my wooden spoon. I breathe more easily now.

Namaste