Losing Mama

Reflections on the anniversary of my mother’s passing

Look at that face.

Radiant, and just a girl.

My mother’s face was a canvas, layered with tenderness, poise and, quite often, charisma.

As is true of most of our mothers, mine was enigmatic, a blend of compassion and alarming conviction, gentleness and volatility. She was a force. I’m pretty convinced that she still is, in another dimension, on another plane.

I can still feel her.

I wish it didn’t take so long for a girl to really know her mother, but I understand her so much better now that I’m older. Now that some of life’s complexities are so much more accessible. Now that I can’t talk to her about all the days before I became her last daughter, when she was still…becoming Mama.

The first half of my mom’s adventure as a human was fraught with anxiety.

She spent so much of her adult energy sweeping all of that childhood turbulence into containment, a “box” she designed for her grown up self, and family, compartmentalizing any residual-and-ancient chaos into the basement, a well-automated, organized lifestyle manufactured to be the antidote for a childhood that was treasured, but disturbed. The sins of the parents.

Of course, I would define sin a bit differently today than in my adolescence.

Her parents were wounded, and acted to relieve their pain in ways that were destructive, both to themselves and their children. (My children would certainly say the same about their origin family.) But Red and Eva Foley were also wonderful, creative, loving human beings who lit up the world with their artistic contributions.

Mama lost her parents early, her mother when she was young (16), and her father, when she was older and had children of her own. Being raised by parents with their own trauma created an atmosphere of anxiety, one that my mother would inadvertently tube into her own children due the subtleties of keeping her pain in the basement while creating a facade of perfection on the ground level. She wasn’t being deceptive; she was trying to give us something she never had.

The pressure building in the basement isn’t something you can see, but it’s something you can feel, and as a small child, I knew. I knew there was something to fear out there, even though I didn’t know what it was. Monsters under the bed.

The first half of my life with Mama, I was privy to both her exuberant love of mothering, as well as her compulsion for order; the latter element, along with her involuntary anxiety, sent energetic messages to me that I would have to live life her way in order to stay safe.

Impossible. It wasn’t in me.

My mother and I were different, at least it started out that way. I was a mess, hyperactive, moderately undisciplined, focused on relationship and play instead of tasks, order and accomplishment.

I was not tidy.

I also didn’t like being told what to do that much, and it was her job in our household to be the disciplinarian most of the time as my father wasn’t able to be as present due to his travels. Mama and I had conflict around her need to manage her children, and my need to not be managed. I wrote a diary once that ripped her to shreds from the eyes of an angsty sixth grader.

I was deep.

In time, I went to college, got married, and experienced some of that independence I had craved.

It wasn’t that great.

My first marriage was birthed in a pool of longing and purpose, later devolving for some time into a blender-full of chaos and trauma. Meanwhile, my mother’s world became much-less-orderly as her childhood turbulence found its expression in her 50’s and 60s. Temporarily agoraphobic, she imagined faceless malevolent intruders watching too closely, taking inventory of her every move. Judging her, and planning to do her harm, shadow-monsters from the past.

I wrote a poem for my mom when I was in my early forties, after having a dream of the struggle she was beginning to walk through, hot coals that were burning off the imprints of childhood nightmares and ill-defined terrors.

Mama, have you been dreaming?

You say that you love me with the whole world watching.

You say that I’m lovely, that I give you pleasure

while we dance over the voices of ridicule

and laugh at the beauty we’ve found in the ashes.

I was knee-deep in ashes at the time myself, and Mama, she lived in her bedroom for a while, afraid to look out the windows or go outdoors for any reason. To be seen. She was afraid to talk on the phone, to trust, and significantly, she was afraid to get help.

Although she eventually did pursue help through counseling and even medication, my hunch is that she mostly followed the breadcrumb trail that was her trust in God, and that, gradually, began to shake off the bondage of the past simply by living a life of prayer and attention to the spirit of God that seemed to be so accessible to her. I believe that although her body grew sicker, her spirit, the real Shirley Lee Foley Boone, grew larger and stronger and broader. Boundless resources, infinite peace.

Mama dug her roots deeply into her sense of God’s presence and faithfulness, and as she aged in her 80s, she laughed. She giggled. She let go. And she inspired so many with the truth that had been fossilized into her core through the fires and torrential rains of her life story.

I had this sense that she was marked for God, and that maybe, I would be fortunate enough to find that I, too, was marked for God, a byproduct of being in her lineage.

Feeling my mother today, it seems she has become for me a parable, a story of resurrection, of transformation. Hers was undeniable, and I’ve been imitating her for the last decade or so, studying the way she responded to pressure, listened to other people’s stories with compassion, looking ahead to the end of her life with peace.

Last Christmas, my mother was dying.

Struggling with congestive heart disease, many symptoms and possibly even more conditions, she had been moved home to be loved on and cared for through hospice care, with a family that wanted to make her transition as easy as possible. She was content to rest and wait on God.

I spoke with her last time I visited, and at one point, I noticed her staring off in the distance for a long time.

I asked, “What are you thinking, Mama?”

Her answer: “I’m just waiting for permission to go home.”

Her expression was pure, childlike, expectant, even.

She wasn’t afraid.

She didn’t want to suffer. I could see that. But beyond that, she easily fell into a state of trust. Surrender.

Acceptance.

I want to become more like her, not the intense woman who seemed overcome with stress when I was little, but the aging mama who picked up the phone every time I called, held space for my pain and fear, who encouraged my ability to trust, and let me lean on her. I want to be like that.

It was a long goodbye, and sadly, mostly long-distance as we lived in different states. Life is complicated and if I could, I would have been by her side, but she was being loved and cared for dearly by the people who were able and willing to hold her and feed her and wait with her.

The permission she had been waiting for came quickly.

Her heart was tired, and the fluids in her body were literally weeping through her pores. Letting go. Reminiscent of her savior who gave up his life, almost frustratingly without a fight, who sweat blood as his time grew near. He seemed to understand that life on this plane isn’t something to fight for when the door opens to Eternity.

Her breath grew more strained, her conscious hours, fewer and further between, and we waited with her. And on January 11th, 2019, while we sang hymns around her bed, weeping and loving on her, she said her final goodbye.

In the end… it comes down to this.

She began her life in struggle and she left in a state of surrender, peace, limitless love and childlike faith. I can’t think of anything else to say that could be more important than that.

Except that I know she loved me, that she loves me still.

Well done, sweet Mama. Can’t wait to hug you again.

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