It was the 32nd anniversary of my mother’s death recently. I have lived as long without her as I had with her. Of course her death shifted the trajectory of my life. Losing a parent, regardless of the state of the relationship does something to the internal life of a survivor. But the course of my life was more deeply rocked by the circumstance of our relationship before that event.

Three years prior to her death, she was diagnosed with a life altering health condition. Not terminal, but quite significantly life changing. She was going to require regular treatment in a facility for what was the foreseeable future at the time. She could somewhat live the life she had before being diagnosed, but something fundamental was going to change.

Our shared lives had been lived on a very rocky road. Indeed, her whole life was a rocky road, but things got progressively worse for her with the birth of each child, until me. I believe she hit her emotional ceiling and therefore hit the proverbial rock bottom. She lived her life in a time and space where seeking help for mental/emotional issues was unheard of except in the gossip section of human relationships. So we all suffered because she suffered. It wasn’t what anyone meant to happen.

I grew up with the understanding that my life wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. My internal path took me to place where I could see that my own situation was for me to change. Unfortunately there were very few self made road signs that had me moving in a positive direction. Somehow, I managed to always return to the light and forge another, new healthier path.

When my mom was diagnosed with a condition that meant she would require regular assistance, it didn’t take a blow to head for me to realize that that could lead to a more stable relationship between she and I. I mean, we were only talking a short term situation until she could regain her strength and be the independent woman she had always been. But the best laid plans…

She never made it back to being herself. The childhood spent without decent medical care for serious illnesses had taken their toll on her very human body. Her body just didn’t have enough fight left in it. She passed away not quite three years later.

But it was the nearly three years I had with her that shifted my focus the most intensely. My mother was incredible in her will to make things happen for herself. To be a child who survived a world war fought in her home country is all that one needs to know about her internal fortitude. I never had a clear enough view of that part of her to measure the breath and width of that power. I found it was immeasurable.

I had always respected her. But, as a friend once told me, respect is akin to fear. I didn’t know her power, but I was certainly afraid of it. But what I learned was that I didn’t need to be fearful of it. That I could touch it and not be hurt by it. It wouldn’t destroy me to be in close proximity to it. I could never own her power, but I could find and own my own.

Her power wasn’t a gift from beyond. She honed her tools and mastered the art of using them. She knew she was unbeatable unless she gave up. I learned the same lessons but from a different book. My life is being lived in a space and time so very different from hers, but our goals were the same. To face life, and death, on our terms.