THE OTHER SIDE OF THANKSGIVING by Sara Wright

THE GRANDMOTHER THREAD

November is the month when the veil is thin and permeable and it is possible to engage with the ancestors …I recently received information that for me November’s moon belongs to the grandmothers, and the liminal space in between and not to the hunter/killers. How is it that what seems so obvious was wrapped in the shroud of my unknowing?

On all hallows I crossed a threshold when the hunters moon transmuted from male to female. trusting my senses, I called up the archetypal grandmothers while grieving my lost connection to my own grandmother. I honored these elders as a powerful force of nature… and left it at that.

 It is important to note that during the last six years, I lost what once had been an archetypal, distant but meaningful relationship to the full moon’s light. This loss was replaced by the frightening presence of the moon’s dark side which interrupted my sleep and brought on nightmares that often seeped into day time experiences.

Once my longing to be a grandmother was a grieving animal that raged in my body but family betrayal, and mental illness on the part of others severed all possibilities.

despite these handicaps I am proud to say that over my lifetime I developed into a woman who possessed integrity, one who created a life of deep meaning in the face of impossible odds.

I couldn’t have done this without surrendering to nature. I made a commitment to care for her like a mother…  every forest, field and river, every dog and deer, bear and bird became a cherished beloved. I continue this practice today at 78 as an ‘old woman’, but no longer as a mother. I have surrendered hope that life will continue as I once knew it, grieve accordingly, and choose acceptance of what is.*

now back to my story…

I learned from each non-human living being more about what it meant to be loved for just who I was than I ever did from any person with the exception of my brother and grandmother and one steadfast friend. My lack of trust in all humans but one, an animal healer, and my dedication to nature walked side by side.

How could I have known that I would live most of my life in this space and have to face death to recover what was lost?

After a recent fall and incarceration in a house of horrors the love of one person who was able to stay emotionally present to my dying self helped me survive.

I came home transformed.  

When I returned to my house a few weeks ago I dreamed that I was a little girl standing at my grandmother’s bedroom door crying out with joy and clapping my hands in ecstasy as I repeated over and over “it’s my birthday!”

I puzzled over this dream with its strange reference to my absentee grandmother.

As I sat with the vignette, long buried memories of my grandmother’s steadfast love began to bubble to the surface, flooding my awareness with feeling. I remembered crawling into my grandmother’s bed on nights when i was frightened, the way she lovingly washed my face with warm water before bedtime, cared patiently and lovingly for me when I was ill, cooked applesauce from the golden apples on her tree, taught me how to sew, made all my clothes, witnessed my confused feelings without judgement even when I had tantrums, demonstrated to me the joys of birdwatching and gardening from the beginning…

Since I was only 24 when my grandmother died, and because I loved her so much, I couldn’t figure out why I never felt the loss of someone who was so important to me or why I never dreamed about her.

Who and what had kept her from me?

I witnessed my grandmother’s agonizing death after she was pushed onto the floor by my violent three-year old son. My grandmother broke her hip and never walked again. For the next year I drove 300 miles every month to see and care for her myself. My grandmother told me that I was all she had. now, I know that she was right because I was the only person who was able to be emotionally present for her during her dying.

The night I returned from the hospital for the last time it was thanksgiving. I had spent my time there washing her face and telling her how much I loved her even though she was unconscious.

After driving to my parents’ home from the hospital supposedly to participate in thanksgiving festivities, without provocation my drunken mother struck me hard, knocking me to the floor and stunning my grandfather into his usual silence. He was used to her crazed and violent outbursts. no one ever held her accountable.

The next morning my grandmother died at 5 am. Her death occurred on the heels of my little brother’s suicide less than two years before. Now I had lost the two people who were closest to me and still felt nothing.

The dead years had begun.

In my grandmother’s place came the family abusers and there were a lot of them. My mother was the worst. In time I learned to dread these family interactions and nightmares which threw me into hopeless despair. My father and grandfather were the two exceptions.

Throughout my life there have been many others…

When I returned to the land of the living, I longed to be re-united with my grandmother the way I had been with my little brother. But this was not to be. Finally, I reached the conclusion that because I had never become a grandmother myself, my grandmother (who I had curiously named ‘baba’ as a baby), was permanently lost to me.

In the meantime, as a student of nature I gradually learned as I aged how to stay focused on the whole, most of the time; to live my life in the present, most of the time. to feel gratitude for the gift of my life, most of the time. When I fell into tunnel vision, I comforted myself by witnessing nature’s extraordinary tenacity; our blue green planet will live on though in what form I do not know. Humans most probably will not.

What triggered the shift that restored the link to my grandmother? a broken hip and brush with death, the heroic and loving witnessing and intervention of my beloved vet were three reasons. My desperate need to return to my earth home and my beloved dogs, my love for the earth, and my willingness to stay with the truth of what is happening to the planet was the other.

It doesn’t escape me that my ability to stay emotionally present for my grandmother so many years ago and my vet’s willingness to stay emotionally present for me after my fall/incarceration may have also opened the door because one loving act mirrored the other.

Becoming a ‘grandmother’ has been for me a lifetime process. I was not supposed to grandmother children but care for animals and plants and love the earth, first as a loving mother and now just as fiercely as a grandmother who is able to be emotionally present during this sixth extinction without expectations or by being burdened by hope. The future is unknown.

I cannot end this story without expressing the child’s fervent plea that when grandmother moon rises at the end of this month, she will shower me with more poignant memories of the grandmother who loved me so. and that I will be able to feel my grandmother’s love casting a circle of pearl white light around me, a circle of protection… just as my brother’s love continues to do, just as my vet’s love does, every single day…

Two from the beyond, and one in life – who can ask for more?

____________________________________

Perhaps my beloved baba/self has become  the archetypal baba yaga whirling around in her house with chicken feet  ‘crowing’ through the night. “Love without expectations, hold your abusers accountable…and give thanks for life.”

ps.

Suddenly I recall that unlike my grandmother, baba yaga didn’t have much use for children unless they earned her respect.