I had a chance to hang out with my friend Andy for awhile this morning. He told me that he moved back to Vegas and has rekindled his romance with his X-wife. The FIFTH X-wife to be exact. It took a bit of doing I guess, as she did have a boyfriend when he arrived back in town. I wouldn't say that my friend Andy is the smoothest of Romeos, but he is sweet.
Andy: "I hear you have a younger boyfriend."
X-wife G: "Yes, he's into martial arts and he has abs that look like a six pack."
Andy: "Well, I have a keg."
My friend Andy decides to take every opportunity to find out about the "six-pack" boyfriend, and all of the close friends and family say he's scum. Andy keeps calling and asking her out. She accepts now and then. Andy begins to wonder why he and X-wife G broke up in the first place.
Days and weeks after, he begins, finally, to wonder why he married and divorced five times. I asked Andy how he felt about this.
Andy: "I used to make a joke all the time when I was married to X-wife G."
Me: "Oh?"
Andy: "I would say, 'How can I respect my wife? Look who she married?'"
Me: " . . . . "
I waited . . . . to hear what he would say. He repeated a fact of life that he'd told me before, but he said it with a depth in his voice, and a look that pierced my Saturday morning Starbucks impregnated veneer.
Andy: "Do you remember me telling you what I found out as a kid about my Mom?"
Me: "I remember you telling me that."
Andy: "So, I continued to . . . you know . . well. . . "
Me: " . . . (looking him dead in the eye) . . . I KNOW. You spent forty years and five marriages . . . "
I engaged his gaze. We held that awkward moment.
Andy: "Until just recently when I realized that I . . . . . "
Me: "Do you think that somehow you did everything you could to support the belief that. . . "
Andy: "Well, of course, I made it impossible for . . . "
Andy's cell phone rings. The moment is temporarily broken. I begin to think about Andy as he talks on his cell phone, then I gaze out the window and think about sailing, then I decide to go the the bathroom. As I'm walking out, Andy calls me to come back. I turn back and face my friend again. He wants closure to our conversation before I leave him. I walk back, and he hangs up his phone. I tell him I'm going to the bathroom now. He nods, looking a bit longingly at me as if to continue our dialog. Then, with a quick recognition of my intention to help him practice endings, he acknowledges my departure. He gets it.
He grins, and then . . . . . winks at me. I leave without any feeling other than my own sense of humility. Humans are so obvious, and so . . . fragile.
JUST WALK ON THROUGH THAT DOOR
This past Mother's Day I thought so much about my friend, the amazing Mia, who lost her mother to cancer several years ago. Her mother had been a vibrant and integral part of her life, and when the cancer forced her mother to go the hospital, never to return home again, Mia went and stayed with her mother as much as she could. She was with her mother as she lay dying, and her Mom was peaceful yet assertive in sharing what her experiences were at the time.
Mia would call me and relate her mother's "odd and delusional" experiences, and at the same time, she would tell me how completely balanced, lucid and aware her mother was of some seemingly "alternate" reality other than what was completely obvious in the moment. Her Mom reached out to the wall of her hospital room, telling Mia that Mother Mary was beckoning her to come home, to walk through the door to the next phase of her life. She made it clear to my friend, her daughter, that her life was just beginning again. It was a new birth, not a death. Mia's mother was being guided by an unseen force, which gave her clarity and courage, and made her dying days not only painless, but inspirational.
I write about my friend fully aware that my own mother went through a similar, yet unique experience with my grandmother, Nethla. I cannot write about that, because I will cry and sob and my fingers will not be able to type. I loved my Gramma Nethla so, so, very . . . . . . very much. Perhaps another day I will.
We walk through our lives paying attention to this and that, the details and the derailments, the distractions and the distortions that captivate our awareness and hold it hostage. But, underneath it all, there is a tiny, wee awareness that we are all just this close to seeing Mother Mary, or that door in the wall, that beckons us on home again. We will leave all of the material behind, our bodies and even our minds, and take with us that with which defined us: our ability to UNDERSTAND, not overstand upon others, our ability to find humility not superiority, our generosity of spirit, not our silly, petty personalities. We will take with us our memories of the wind in our hair, the pride of learning to ride a two-wheeler bike, the majesty of snowflakes, and the unmistakable gaze of unconditional love that only comes through a mother's intense eyes upon her precious, precious child.
It must be that same unmistakable gaze of unconditional love that then turns around and comes through a daughter's intense eyes upon her precious mother, as she lay dying and looking toward that unseen door in the wall. It makes me wonder . . . . . .
This guy is missed . . . .
:-(
