Raising the Dead

After my mom died, I'd silently walk the halls of her dark, empty house while my toddlers played outside, happy to have a few moments to myself. Her death was still fresh but more than that I was numb to my heavy grief due to my frazzled post-partum brain. My body ached from the life I had given and the life now missing. I wanted to lift my arms up for help but found they were too heavy to raise. Gone was the person able to spot my silent pain a mile away-my life's champion. Now I was left to fend for myself. I carried the hunger of her loss in the same arms I carried my sons in and it seemed to be slowly crushing me.

No one in my family lived in the house anymore. For as long as I could remember our house had been bursting at the seams with people and activity thanks to loud, baseball bat-wielding children. My mother raised six children in that house and she died in that house. Now it was her empty tomb.

Still, I walked those halls whenever I got the chance. Nothing had changed since the morning she died. Her pictures of grandchildren still hung on the wall and her children's dusty wedding pictures sat atop the piano. It was her house and I could feel it- that was why I kept coming back. My murky brain didn't miss the significance in finding comfort in the relic of a life I would never have again. It was strange to feel such peace there but I did. I discovered my mother may have been dead but her house was very much alive.

My mom's sweet spirit breathed in that house. Her love permeated every surface of my childhood home. She had lived there for twenty-five years and her goodness could not be erased. I felt like I was spending the day with her, like she was only a room away. What an amazing discovery-that all kindness, every act of love lives on forever, like a breeze that cannot be extinguished.

She built that home. She never raised the walls or poured the foundation but she kept safe walls up to protect her family and she was the foundation for all of us. She was our mother: a creator of life and curator of our future.

In the eight years I've been a mother there have been more mornings than I can count where I've opened a blurry eye to a pack of hot-breathed, hungry children and thought, "I don't think I can do this again."

The fight over kitchen chairs at breakfast, the missing shoes, the homework, all play out daily in one nauseating loop. When I rise in the morning I pray to know how to make my children selfless, my soul patient and gentle, and my house a home, all while trying to keep my sanity intact. It's taken me awhile but finally I've discovered what special ingredient I need to make this possible: daily life. The priceless materials of exalting my family are made up of sticky fingers, fits over seat belts, and prepared dinners untouched.

The self fallen out of love with itself

Through the tedium of familiarity;

Or this little self,

So curious, so hungry,

Who emerged from the woman I love

"Egg" C.G Hanzlicek

In motherhood, you have to work with what you are given: repetition. Repetition is the answer and the only option. Those mind-numbing, soul-stretching days feel endless but the soul cannot be won in a short time- yours or your child's. My mother's great work was not done in a day but over decades. A child is never done learning and a person is never done being loved.

Shortly before my mother died, as she lay slowly dying in her bed, I visited her with my fussy twin babies. I tried to soothe my boys, quiet them so as not to wake my mother from her rest but as was common with my twins, nothing calmed them. I was angry that this had become my life; crying babies that I could not soothe. I had only been a mother for two months and already I was a failure.

The moment when I reached the pinnacle of frustration I turned to see my mom, oxygen tank in hand, rushing down the hall, coming to my rescue. My dying mother, using artificial air to breathe, came to help me with my crying babies. She took one boy from me and rocked him while I tended to the fussy one. In a few minutes, calm was restored. I had newfound strength to go on another day.

This was one of the most beautiful things I had ever witnessed but what was it but a mother helping her child? It is the most common thing in the world. It occurs as often as the sun rises and sets. It was certainly second nature to my mom. She did not hesitate to climb out of bed to help me. She had developed her benevolent nature from years of nurturing. A mother's love is a miracle and it happens every day.

Hopefully my love for my children, shown through devoted hours of play, discipline and even enduring tantrums will be a miracle in their lives like my mother has been in mine.

"If you want to change the world, go home and love your family."

-Mother Teresa

The heart and mind are calloused through the sleep deprivation, diaper changes, and episodes of Sid the Science Kid but that only makes them stronger. In the darkness of raising children you find the brightest light. You give your child your life and they give you back one even better.

The lasting legacy of my mother is that every bit of good you do, every act of service you render your family will go on forever, blessing the lives of those you love, even after you are gone. That seems worth the long days. That is something worth celebrating.

Happy Mother's Day.

I Stop Writing the Poem

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives

or who dies, I'm still a woman.

I'll always have plenty to do.

I bring the arms of his shirt

together. Nothing can stop

our tenderness. I'll get back

to the poem. I'll get back to being

a woman. But for now

there's a shirt, a giant shirt

in my hands, and somewhere a small girl

standing next to her mother

watching to see how it's done.

Tess Gallagher

---