It is hard, harder than I thought, coping with my mother’s death. I am left wondering why as we weren’t very close to each other. Because of a dysfunctional family history, I was more than glad to live at a significant distance from her with visits usually limited in time every second year. I had no respect for her as a person. Yet, she was my mother and had her own issues to which I was never privy. Other than being grandmother to our three children, there was no sense of her loving me as her child that I had ever felt while growing up. I didn’t have a happy childhood. There wasn’t any way for me to bridge that distance, especially since she always denied that there were problems in our home when I was young.
Perhaps it is because I missed out on being able to get any responses to my questions which denied closure and acceptance. Today, my wife took this photo of me in a place that I had chosen for meditation just off the beach. I am amazed at how nurturing and supportive she has been for me, especially as I challenge everything she knows with this strange behaviour of my nudity.