untitled
Soundtrack in my head: Smashing Pumpkins, “untitled”
Okay, there’s more to the slightly somber post I made five days ago. I’m approaching the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death this Saturday.
A friend asked me how I’m going to mark the occasion and I really honestly don’t know. Mom and I had a complex relationship, one that we attempted to talk about a little bit once it became clear that her time in this world was about to run out. But I think that there are depths to my relationship with her that I was only able to fathom after her passing. I’ll probably have even more insight in the coming months and years.
I have to note one irony, though. Many people from the Mahikari organization (the spiritual organization I was involved with) turned out for her memorial service after she passed. The next time I visited the Mahikari center, I was surprised to discover my mother’s picture displayed prominently in the center of the dojo bulletin board. It was a copy of a program from the memorial service, which had a the caption underneath that said, “A Radiant Light.”
I understand that the Mahikari members meant well, but if they knew her at all, they would have known that she was definitely not a fan of Mahikari. In one of the last conversations I ever had with her she expressed concern about my continued involvement with that spiritual organization. My family knows me well enough to know that her words by themselves would have had little impact on me. Yet, for many reasons I ultimately did leave the organization, and I’m the happier for it.
The first time I visited the Baha'i center last summer, I mentioned my mother’s passing, and someone suggested that she was actually guiding me spiritually from the next world. I’m not inclined to speculate about such things. We can place people in a certain part of our mind’s picture postcard, but a postcard, is, after all, only two-dimensional.
These are really the only things that come to mind as I think about the anniversary. Moods come and go and have been doing so for the last month or so. Over the last few days I have found it increasingly difficult to think of things to write on this blog. That’s okay—this writer’s block will pass, and the somewhat overcast mood will pass, too.
Last year, I wrote a hastily scrawled but nice little tribute that I read at her memorial service. This year, somehow silence seems the most appropriate.
Okay, there’s more to the slightly somber post I made five days ago. I’m approaching the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death this Saturday.
A friend asked me how I’m going to mark the occasion and I really honestly don’t know. Mom and I had a complex relationship, one that we attempted to talk about a little bit once it became clear that her time in this world was about to run out. But I think that there are depths to my relationship with her that I was only able to fathom after her passing. I’ll probably have even more insight in the coming months and years.
I have to note one irony, though. Many people from the Mahikari organization (the spiritual organization I was involved with) turned out for her memorial service after she passed. The next time I visited the Mahikari center, I was surprised to discover my mother’s picture displayed prominently in the center of the dojo bulletin board. It was a copy of a program from the memorial service, which had a the caption underneath that said, “A Radiant Light.”
I understand that the Mahikari members meant well, but if they knew her at all, they would have known that she was definitely not a fan of Mahikari. In one of the last conversations I ever had with her she expressed concern about my continued involvement with that spiritual organization. My family knows me well enough to know that her words by themselves would have had little impact on me. Yet, for many reasons I ultimately did leave the organization, and I’m the happier for it.
The first time I visited the Baha'i center last summer, I mentioned my mother’s passing, and someone suggested that she was actually guiding me spiritually from the next world. I’m not inclined to speculate about such things. We can place people in a certain part of our mind’s picture postcard, but a postcard, is, after all, only two-dimensional.
These are really the only things that come to mind as I think about the anniversary. Moods come and go and have been doing so for the last month or so. Over the last few days I have found it increasingly difficult to think of things to write on this blog. That’s okay—this writer’s block will pass, and the somewhat overcast mood will pass, too.
Last year, I wrote a hastily scrawled but nice little tribute that I read at her memorial service. This year, somehow silence seems the most appropriate.
Steve McClure
1 Comment
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Reader Comments (1)