Mom - thanks!

No one hung onto the familiar for dear life like my Mom, Katharine Reynolds Lockhart.  Understandably.  She’d lost her dearly beloved father when she was just 19.  She lost her dearly beloved youngest son when he was just 11.  She lost her beyond dearly beloved husband when he was just 62 - she was 63, two years older than I am now.

With so much unexpected loss in her life, it’s understandable that Mom’s driving principle was Keep Things As They Are.  Even if they didn’t work, if they were familiar constants in her life,  she protected them with all the devotion of a mother bear protecting cubs.  And you do NOT want to take on a mother bear protecting her cubs.

Some people find it practically beyond belief that Mom gained enough confidence in herself - at the tag end of her 80s!! - that she could lighten up her personal protection detail of the familiar in her life.  

Mom always said Lockhart Ladies are slow bloomers.  

In some small nook of her deepest self, Mom had remained open to getting a healthier view of a stronger, more resilient self than she was inclined to believe.  She just needed a little nudge from the right person.  (it wasn't me, though Lord knows I'd tried)

As Mom wrote to her e-mail circle (no blogging back in 2000), she discovered she could take risks, could do things that might have once-dreaded consequences, that the once dreaded could actually happen – and she didn’t die. 

“And I didn’t die.”  That’s a quote from when she took a risk with someone whose non-verbal but powerfully felt threat had been to withdraw totally from her life is she (Mom) asked for something the person didn’t want to consider.  

For decades, that looming unspoken had kept Mom in check, kept her from taking a step in her own best interest, kept her clinging to a life preserver emblazoned, "Don't think of going there."

It wasn’t a big step, it didn’t require sacrifice from anyone – but it required something, and the person found that contentious.

For Mom to take that small, seemingly insignificant step, one she KNEW would displease the other but which was important for her own happiness, required Mom to go totally utterly completely outside her personal comfort zone.  It required that she put HER best interests first.  Even now, almost 15 years later, I consider it the most courageous thing I ever experienced. 

• She put herself first, in spite of a lifetime of not even putting herself on a list. 
• She put herself first, even though it might mean unimaginable loss.
• She put herself first, because she realized it might not be the easiest thing to do, but it was the wisest.

That, for a woman born in 1910 & brought up in an age when women weren’t trained to put their best interests into the mix of what needed to be done, is downright jaw dropping. 

Yes, the person did, to all intents & purposes, withdraw from Mom’s life.  And it was sad.  But sadder for the person than it was for Mom.  

Mom had - of her own free will – let go of the life preserver of the familiar in favor of breast stroking into a wiser, more genuine unimaginable.  

The last two years of Mom's life were filled with the unimaginable - - unimaginable experiences, unimaginable vistas, unimaginable relationships. Even an unimagined, priceless connection with the very person whose withdraw hadn't killed her.

What was her greatest discovery, once she let go of that safety-assuring life preserver?  That she hadn’t lost anything, that she was still the person she was, only more able to appreciate all that she was, from her youngest years to her oldest, years filled with trials & years filled with triumphs.  And, as her daughter, that was the greatest, best blessing she could give a child. 

All from letting go of the precious What-Was for the unimaginable Is & To Be.

Mom – thanks!