Death, Spirit, Rebirth
My mother died February 10th, 2016, five days shy of her 70th birthday.
Prior to that, probably about a year before, my car had been vandalized, we hit a deer, and I had done a week of free work for no good reason. I had started to become depressed again and I didn't realize it. There were times where I would sit and do nothing for days, work had slowed down considerably and I didn't seek it out. There was a time, about when I wrote the first blog post on here, when I thought I was turning a new leaf, about to do some big things - and nothing happened. I found motivation hard to attain.
And about the time I started to realize I was in a bad place, my mom was diagnosed with cancer.
I went home to help her and a few months later she had passed with my father, my sister, her dog, and I at her bedside.
We fall, we pick ourselves up, we sink slowly and don't realize we've hit the bottom, we think we recover but we actually have gone nowhere... And life goes on and hits you harder.
We struggle. We strive. We continue on.
The idea of continuing on without my mother is hard though.
When we all believed she had more time she bought a voice recorder. Upon her death, I took a moment alone to listen to them. I immediately thought about preservation and uploaded them to a few of my many cloud accounts. I did the same with files of hers - personal writings she had pondered over and never sent. I saw things that revealed her soul to me - parts of her world I had no idea about. All of these things including scanned documents, pictures, voicemails, and videos all found a place in the cloud, under a folder labeled "Mom."
If there ever has been evidence of a ghost it's in this age.
I took solace in the idea that, when I'm lonely, or sad, or if I need guidance I can look to this digital imprint my mother has left. I can find the emotions she had in her hardest times, use her reactions to my advantage, rebuild her for a moment in my mind and ask the difficult questions. Parents help guide us but it's up to us to make decisions or to proceed in any way.
But just while writing this I realized something, I spent my 28 years with my mother - the impact she left on me will always be there. With or without some digital spirit, I carry my mother with me, always.
She left me with an opportunity though: To learn, to seek, to feel. My walls are broken down and the world stands before me. My mother is telling me to be the best version of me I can. To pick myself up by my bootstraps, get out there, and do what is right for me. I will hurt along the way, I will fall, I will feel like I've lost everything - but then I'll remember she's with me, and I will rise again - and I will do this over and over until the day I rejoin her.
And that is what I'll do.
I love you Mom.