I did an NLP session with a friend about my mom’s death. She acknowledged that how I feel was very complex, that there were many moving parts and not one answer. She said let’s work on one part and see how I feel and how it changes. I told her I couldn’t feel my mom’s love, that I was so used to her expecting me to be perfect and help her, and that sometimes I was very afraid that I wouldn’t be able to learn whatever was needed to fix her technical problems. And this was how I felt about going on this trip. I was terrified I would lose her, and was waking up at night before the trip and writing down instructions on what to do if we got separated. She carried them in her purse till the end. 

I felt I had failed because I hadn’t saved my mom’s life. My friend asked if the perfectionist part was willing to speak. It said it needed to be perfect because it wanted desperately to save my mom and help her be happy. And that being perfect might help avoid my dad’s wrath and earn the right to deserve his love and avoid his hatred. It had to be the perfect student so it could get the accolades and attention it wasn’t getting at home, and contradict the feeling that I was a bad person. I wanted desperately to save my mom’s life, and to set her free. 

The grief I felt was equivalent to having my child die because of my negligence. I felt like she was my child. My friend said that made perfect sense. I said one of the reasons her death was so hard was that I was supposed to save her, that’s why I went on the trip. It wasn’t to “have fun together”, as she said, but to be the responsible parent looking out for her child. I should have sacrificed my desires and followed her everywhere. I was haunted by the idea that I might have been able to prevent Lynda from reaching out if I’d sat next to my mom, the open window, so many places where I should have sacrificed my needs for my mom’s. And that’s exactly what the tour guide had said, he’d lectured me that I had been selfish and should have sacrificed short term enjoyment for my mom

My friend asked if there was a part that could help somehow, a creative part. I saw an artist at an easel. And I told my friend about seeing the play Vincent, and how Vincent like Don McClean’s song, how he tried to set them free.  And I realized how desperately I wanted to set my mom free, to have her enjoy her life, not just compulsively do her to do list, but actually thrive. I said even though I’d like the artist to be able to paint a different past, that doesn’t feel real. H said maybe the artist is able to paint a different future. Something about perspective, visually and emotionally.

Then she asked me to see another part, and it was like Mickey Mouse with the long robes. A magician. Or maybe trying on the robes and experimenting. I said this part is flexible, can see different options, and experiments, tries things out. I thought that this came to mind because I was so unable to see my way around being perfect, that I could’t imagine being any other way. This part somehow could. 

My friend acknowledged that I have been shattered by what happened. I told her that I have always used my big beautiful brain, as she called it, to beat myself up and smash myself to drive myself to be better.  Maybe this is a new stage in my life, she said, where my big beautiful brain can learn to help me feel loved, maybe through the mediation of creative (and magical) parts. And I suddenly had the image of a beloved pot that was broken and stitched together with gold. Like in Japan or Incan and pre-Colombian societies in Chile and Peru. I have seen such pots.

I told her that I haven’t been able to feel my mom’s love, or many good memories. While I said this, my very independent cat walked over to me and started eating grass.  And I saw a seagull way above. I remembered my mom wanting to be a seagull when she died because she loved the freedom. She had been inspired by the book Jonathan Livingston seagull. 

Mostly what I feel is guilt and sadness. My friend shared that  she had been shattered by a friend’s death, and struggled with grief for a year until she started feeling that friend’s love. She said she felt like I wouldn’t have to wait a year. 

My body has been in full blow panic since my mom fell on April 5.  Since then, 24/7, my body has been making stress hormones just like animals when they lose a loved one. They call out and keep going back, looking for the lost one, and generate tremendous amounts of cortisol. Since then, I haven’t been able to relax or do anything fun. Even walking at Rancho hasn’t been much fun. Always the same path. I wanted something different.

My friend asked me to see that my mom would not want me to suffer, certainly wouldn’t want me to be tormented. When I try to visualize her, and even in my night dreams, I don’t feel deep love from her. She is distant, I am told she is missing, last seen walking down a road. Or I see her through a grating in the floor, very far away, and she doesn’t see me.  My friend asked me to imagine my mom’s best self.  I long to feel that she is not judging or angry at me for letting her die, at not being able to move heaven and earth to keep her here. But I can’t. I can’t access that part of her. 

Perhaps it is because I did not have that kind of relationship with her. That was for others. She called Shawn sweetie, took Sharon to the botanical garden and beach, out for coffee.  She never did that with me. Even in SF, I would go to Farley’s with Bob. She never came. Had to work on the computer. Do mail.  to places she thought they would like, did things they wanted to do. Since I was in my 30s, I begged her for that kind of relationship. Told her I longed to be her daughter, to be consoled and held. To sit together, to do something fun. But that was not my role. To her, I was the fixer, emotionally and technically. My job was to move heaven and earth. Including to keep her from dying. And ironically, she resented me for it, even accidentally calling me the name of an older sister who she felt perpetually judged by.  

She created a carefully prepared exterior complete with make up. Even in Morocco, even at the end, she had to wear foundation, lipstick, rouge. Couldn’t be seen without this. I saw her as she was. I would walk in her door A212 at Dominican and she would tell me that the person she had taken on, her buddy, was trouble. Had kicked her under the table when she had missed a line. A lot of people were trouble to my mom, including the Moroccan doctor whom she said was killing her. Trouble meant you weren’t doing what she wanted, either triggering her sense of inadequacy or limiting her freedom. 

Another friend had suggested I visualize her on a cloud looking down at me with love and appreciation. This was a hard image to see in my mind. I was the Gromit to her Wallace. She told me what needed to be done and I did it. Wash the windows, fix the computer, make her phone work, program it so Face ID worked every time, update the contacts, log on and figure out the passwords, fix the printer. The list was endless. One time I spent 3 hours with customer service trying to troubleshoot a printer, only to send it back.

She was charming to the outside world, but I saw the lies she told with ease, the thin veneer of that charm, the naked anger and frustration beneath, the contempt for those who reminded her of the older sisters who had tormented her and held her to such high standards, to whom she was incompetent, when she was young. She often confused me with those sisters.  Ironically I felt that way about her. That I was never enough.