The Quiet Before the Ache

Photo by Stefan Bischoff on Unsplash

Good morning, dear friends. It is just a bit after 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Dawn hasn’t yet arrived, but here I am. Funny thing over the last month or so - no matter what time I go to bed, I seem to wake up at nearly the same time every morning. If that time coincided with my daily alarm clock, one might assume it is just my body’s rhythm adjusting to the time my alarm goes off most days, but I’m not waking up at my normal alarm time. Nearly every day, the time has been 5:42 a.m. At first, it frustrated me. I’ve spent several menopausal years begging sleep to come and being brought to tears by my seeming inability to sleep enough. I thought those days were finally over. This time, since this new pattern has happened several times now, I realize I am not really tired when I wake up before dawn. Then when it happened over and over again, I began to look at it as a sort of gift. Time when the world is still quiet and I am alone with my thoughts.

There have been a multitude of those.

This morning, I am thinking about the roles we play in life. Looking at the many ways we show up in the world can be a bit overwhelming. Have you ever listed out, even if just in your mind, all of the roles you fulfill? For me, at any given time I am a mom, a grandmother, a friend, a coworker, a neighbor. I’m often a learner, sometimes a teacher. I have recently added adventurer to that list. I have much to write about regarding that new role, but that’s not the one that’s foremost on my mind this morning.

I am also, for now, a daughter.

It is this role that has become my primary focus in the last month. Looking back, when I was young, being a daughter was easy. Puberty came and it got a little harder. When my own children were born, it became a whole lot easier, and it really rested there for many years until my mom began to struggle with age-related health issues. It has been an even bigger challenge over the last couple of years after a fall reduced her ability to be independent. It feels nearly impossible right now.

My mom has made the decision to let nature take its course now that she is 92, which is absolutely her right. I mentioned in an earlier post that I will not go into details. I wasn’t going to write about this at all, but I find myself unable to write about anything else which is why there was no post last week. As her daughter, I am not quite sure how to navigate my role in this circumstance. Most everything in me wants to cling more tightly, to revert back to the little girl that screams, “Mommy, don’t leave me!” That’s not fair though, is it?

We humans know from an early age that we will eventually say goodbye to those we love, whether by their death or our own. I lost my grandparents ages ago. I’ve lost aunts and uncles. I lost my father nearly 44 years ago. Now, either sooner or later, I will lose the one person who is the last witness and close connection to the whole of my own life. She is the primary link to my history. She has always, always been there. Soon she will not be.

I don’t know how to exist in a world without her. I will learn to, but right now the idea seems too daunting, as is the thought of letting her go. So I cry and I pray and I look for distractions. And I try to be a good daughter, even in this.

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