I could not let today pass without recalling it was my wedding, way back in 1969. It was so hot, I remember it so clearly. sunny, my lovely mum, whom I miss very much, there fussing around me, making sure I had something blue and borrowed, my huge hair pierced with fresh white daisies, the blue cornflowers in a simple posy. My white crepe trouser suit from John Stephen and my white patent shoes ! Worried the life out of my mum, I remember the look on her face after returning from a trip to London to buy a wedding dress , ha ha! she was totally horrified that I would be married in trousers and rang to ask the vicar if that would be ok. How things have changed Guess this was laying some kind of ground rules about how I would live my adult life, something about wearing the trousers !!
My mum died in 1992 and Bruce died in 2o10. Me I am going strong !! and if you read the poem below, I believe that the ragged red flag is flying high now !
A poem for my mum
When I say, ‘My mother has died’, I mean my ‘most beloved’. Leave me to myself now, for I am a ship who’s lost her riggings; suddenly come unmoored.
My mother has died; She has earned her rest now, waiting only, and proudly so, for her sails to be taken down.
I, the daughter, see to the mending of my mother’s sails; I seek her worn and broken threads of light, reweaving her dazzling linen.
And though there be broken threads not able to be re-woven, I will gently pull the edges together and stitch one side to the other… and if not able to be mended, then I will patch with parts from my own most earnest life over the places where my mother’s life was worn through, . . . or never was.
Over time, the sails of the mothership will be fitted to the daughtership; raised up on the mainsail, and the final touch - the red ragged flag – hers - will be flying topmast of my ship.
I’ll be let down into the waters then, I, the daughter, will glide again… but this time, under the best sails inherited from my mother… and all the mothers of the motherliness before her.
Ay, Mother, let me tell you my treasured dearie-dear, one last thing I have learned from your spirit passing through me as sparkling shadow passes through darkening shadow, on this open night-sea journey…
I am learning to navigate by the mysteries of the farthest stars - the ones that the great wake of your passing has revealed to me for the very first time.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
