It is hard to have someone who is so close to you and so much a part of your life die. I am sorry. The best advice I can give is this: Trust yourself. Trust yourself to know best how to grieve and when, and when you feel like you really want to do something to remember your mother and honor her, don't feel guilty about dropping whatever you are doing and going and doing that, whether it is visiting her grave or the place where she liked to have picnics, or baking her favorite kind of cookies.
Cultures all around the world have different ways of going through this, of letting the person go but holding the love of the person within you, knowing that the love transcends death and that ultimately you and she are part of a greater Oneness, and can never be completely lost from each other.
But what you do doesn't have to be elaborate. It can even be silly. And how you speak with your mother is easy. Don't make it too hard, just make it like daydreaming. Don't talk yourself out of it by saying, "This isn't real, it's just my imagination." Of course it's your imagination. Without imagination there would be no such thing as faith (religious or otherwise), music, or love. It is our ability to imagine that lets us take all the whirlwind of thoughts and feelings and images and sounds and smells that we experience, and put it all together into something that makes sense and has meaning.
So just let yourself imagine, let yourself daydream, and don't try to force it to be anything in particular. Just start talking to her, and letting her answer, i.e. imagining her answers. On a deeper level, that imagining or daydreaming might actually be your intuition tuning into her real continuing presence in your life, and the things she says to you may be absolutely genuine and real and really come from her. Who is to say they are not?
Just do it and, well, play with it. As I said, don't try to hard, and try not to keep thinking "Would she really say that? Am I doing it right?" That's like reminding yourself every five minutes through a movie, "This isn't real, I'm just watching a movie." Of course you're watching a movie, but who cares? It's boring if you don't let yourself get caught up in it. So just have a nice, casual conversation with her whenever you want.
I'll betcha that sooner or later if you do that, your mom will say something to you that you weren't expecting. When you think about it later, you'll realize, wait a minute, if I were just imagining it, I'd know what she was going to say, she wouldn't say something that surprised me. So maybe it is real..
If it's real for you, if it shows honor to her and gives you peace, then it is real and it is good. Don't let anyone in your life, or yourself, tell you otherwise.
Blessings,
Alder
|