A Keening for Myself

Slowly I find myself leaving. I take last walks to say goodbye to certain places which is a ritual I carried out all my life. I am woven together with threads of this place, my body holds her water and blood and my bones are made from her bedrock. Then slowly, without any movement, I shift between places. One foot is here while the other has crossed the ocean onto another continent. I am back to encompassing both worlds. Leaving is painful. It’s not muted by knowing I can return at any time. It’s an awareness which brings into focus the pain of those who left and knew they’d never return. Violently uprooted and ripped from the land. To be born of generations upon generations who lived and died on this soil to then be cleared away, eradicated as if they were vermin, swept aside to make way for the more profitable sheep.  

With my mom's passing, I felt I had it handled.  I was her executor though I'm the youngest of her six kids.  The last three months have flown by and I've felt like I had a long list of things to do and no time to grieve.  I had to organize her funeral, disposal of her things, and her finances.  

As I finished one task, I felt like I was checking off a box on some crazy list I never wanted to deal with.  Mixed in with this, I kept having dreams of my mom and my dad (he died 34 years ago).  I can't tell you specifics other than they were always laughing and there was always light.  

For the past year, my father has been on my mind.  He died 34 years ago on October 25.  Whenever someone is on my mind like this, it usually means I need to do something for them.  No matter what I did, what conversation I had, I felt him hovering.  

I realized on the date of his passing, he was waiting.  My mother became ill after heart surgery November 2017.  At the time, we talked about end of life issues while she was in the hospital, nursing home, and even at the assisted living facility.  I took over her finances and while all six of us discussed health care issues, I took the lead with her care.  

Those who are estranged from their biological relatives can struggle deeply with feelings of grief, but it is a strange grief, something that feels unnatural or out of season. No one has died, gotten divorced, or was fired from a job. But what did end was the image you had for most of your life about the people you thought you knew so well.That ending is an extremely difficult loss not only because of the sudden nature of most family cut-offs, but because that ending also changed you and how you understand yourself and, importantly, life itself. Family Aggression impacts our sense of justice, fairness, and a belief in the benevolence of the world. Additionally, estrangement and family shunning is not merely the loss of one person, but a sudden loss of an entire group of people with whom you were once intimately bound. Losing all this in one fell swoop is a profound and devastating loss, especially when parents you believe love you have now become hostile, even threatening.

Because there is no open dialogue in most cultures to help one come to terms with the reality of family cut-offs, grief and confusion can remain like a dark cloud hanging over every day. Where are the grieving rituals for family estrangement? Death and divorce are now openly discussed in many countries and there are rituals to mark these transformative moments in our lives. However, family cut-offs are typically hidden by the victims because they feel so unnatural and are so fundamentally wrong. Victims often believe that cut-offs are uncommon, which is not true. Also, families who act aggressively work hard at convincing daughters and sons who differentiate from the Family Script that they themselves are wrong, unwanted, and alone. Isolating targets is a way to pressure them to conform and return to the family's way of thinking. This is a key piece in the dominating, aggressive family behavior and one reason why family estrangements are not openly discussed.

I do celebrate Mother's Day for those who are mothers in my world. I do not celebrate it for myself. For me, it is a time of grief. You see, I was blessed with one of those wickedly funny Southern mamas you hear about. Mine was a firecracker when she got wound up. She was a fierce defender of her family. She was also a Catholic who loved her Wiccan child. I tend to shy away from the concept of being blessed, but in this I was.