bereavement and legacy

My mother died September 12, 2001 of cancer. My great-grandma a year later at the age of 92. On the 15th my grandmother suffered the same fate as my mother in a hospice in Kelowna. I just got back from visiting her. Just got back from another birthday spent with a dying loved one. Birth and death meet again. It's hard to comprehend.

My grandmother is an amazing person. She is extremely humorous, light hearted, down to earth and most of all very loving. Everyone who has met my grandma has felt loved and the comfort of her generous hospitality. Grandma's life has not been free from suffering. She has endured trials of many kinds, and what amazes me about her is her constant joy and concern for others. She seems to always be stable. I felt the same about my mother. It was as though they had the secret to contentment - something I've been longing for my whole 26 years! :) I didn't know you could find it.

Being with Grandma, talking of life, memories, family, etc. brought me to a deep appreciation not only for domestic life (who knew?! ..who am I kidding, we all know domestic life in it's greatest form is amazing) but for family and simplicity. She has lived a full life, not because she has traveled the world or learned 6 languages or earned a PhD. She had a family and she loved them. She had fun with them. She grew with them. I watch home videos and remember and think, "Yes, it has been quite full!"

My Grandma was very close to my mother. She had her at 16. I think of Gilmore Girls. She told me two weeks ago that my Mom was the best daughter anyone could ever have. She said my Mom seemed to be born with a deep wisdom that she had even as a child. I can recognize this. As I said, my Mom appeared to not only know the secret to contentment, but also hold the key of freedom from the greater societal opinion and confinements therein. My Mom traveled alone with her friend when she was 14. She taught classes in her teens. She studied art at College and painted. She studied guitar and played and sang. She wrote poetry. She danced. She got her nursing degree. She loved the outdoors. She loved life! So far I see many similarities with me. Then my Mom got married, young. She was 22 when she married my father and 23 when she had me! If I followed in her footsteps I should be coming up on my third kid by now.

As I have written in previous posts, I seem to have a distaste for the traditional nuclear family life. But not because itself is undesirable or bad, but because I have seen it abused, and often miserable, confining and restricting. I believe it doesn't have to be this way. I've seen this in my family. Individuals make a family. Therefore, my mother being her independent, wonderful self continued as such. She had sleepovers in her 40's. She continued to paint, play, write, sing, etc. She was free and still independent (interdependent.. as we all are, aren't we?) She was also an amazing Mom (and cultivated the same freedom and love for life and others in us). Mom and artist. Mom and nurse. Mountaineer. Nutritionist. Counsellor. Friend.

I thank God that I was able to witness a woman who was not bound to a role. My grandmother said this, and I can't help but agree with her that my Mom was exceptional. I could really weep everytime I think about what I'm missing with her gone (and now with my wonderful grandmother gone).

So this is the legacy I am a part of. I'm the next woman up, with a life that so far looks quite different from the ones before me. I'm up for the challenge in learning exceptional love, contentment and liberation.


Great-Grandma Bodie
1910-2002


Grandma
1943-2009


Mom
1959-2001

clive on grief

"Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief."

on marriage

Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract, and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences. -Isadora Duncan

When it comes down to it the thought of marriage frightens me. It frightens me because it is all responsibility to convention, roles, expectations and (apparent) practicality. I am desperately in love with freedom. I feel as though I could live forever on family, friendships and occasional flirtation. However, there are some moments when my mind wonders on this idea of commitment. And I realize that not only is it somewhat dazzling, but I indeed exist and thrive within commitment already. Amongst other examples I think specifically of my brother and sister and how their love and commitment to me has been all freeing, life-giving and mostly lovely. So it is the idea that marriage is not freeing is what keeps me from considering it.

Again, when I think about marriage as a part of my life I realize that it seems to me that it is not marriage I want (for as I said I have commitment already from others, and I'm failing to see other positive reasons for marriage (or examples of)) but romance. And not romance as it may be traditionally understood either. Not the chivalrous kind but the kind that is equal and mutually understood. I seem to believe that there exists a process of shared enchantment where in seeing glimpses of the bare soul there is desire to know and reveal. That it becomes both choice and desire to set the other free in the rawest of states. That freedom and love are the ultimate goals for the other. If this did exist, this I could commit to.. for it is free.

I would never wish to gain my independence from any man, nor my economic or social security. I am not in need of one to give me my greatest value or affirmation. I desire no spiritual covering or adventure coach. The thought of bearing children does not come with a natural understanding to me. I feel as far removed from the image of a women in floral-print dress in the kitchen as any man would. No, these things I am not looking for. I desire life, love and freedom (freedom perhaps from the conventional/traditional ideas).. and if this exists in a commitment with a man.. then of course, I welcome it (or welcome the consideration).

grief

Infidel

Infidel (literally, 'one without faith') is what Ayaan Hirsi Ali has professed herself as and has plastered in large all-cap letters on her recent autobiography. A brave woman as association with such a name puts her in direct threat of Islamic radicals.

I have just finished reading her fabulous autobiography where Ayaan details her life as she moved throughout Eastern Africa and the Middle East specifically Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya. She places emphasis on how Islam shaped and changed her life, then to a greater extent how it affects it's followers and finally, Islam as a worldview that influences the world. Her story is all horrific, fascinating and thought-provoking. I winced through it as I read about her experience with female genital mutilation and the treatment of women in most Islamic countries. How can you leisurely read about a girl of 14 begging her husband who is holding a knife to her scar (the result of circumcision) not to cut her open so he can penetrate her? He so kindly got her cut open at a hospital instead of doing it himself. Such experiences fill her life's story. It is horrifying.

Ayaan also describes the political and social environments of the many countries she lived in. The reign of Siad Barre, the battle and ultimate destruction of Mogadishu (think Black Hawk Down). The rise of the Brotherhood of Islam and their influence in the world. Finally, she relays how she escaped an arranged marriage and fled to Holland. There she stayed independently where she worked factory jobs, learned Dutch and worked herself through school, gaining a masters degree in political science. Her observations and description of western culture from architecture to sex to philosophies is direct and eye-opening. We hardly comprehend our own culture until the other appears. Ayaan made her way into Dutch parliament and fought for women's rights, various immigrant policies, etc. all the while publically rising up as a fierce critic of Islam.

Together with Theo van Gogh, (a filmmaker in Amsterdam) Ayaan made a short film called Submission (you can watch it on youtube). The movie simply and artfully communicated the oppression of women in Islam. In November, 2004 Theo van Gogh was chased down on the streets of Amsterdam, shot, had his throat slit and was stabbed numerous times by an Islamic radical. With the last stab his killer attached a note onto Theo's chest addressed to Ayaan threatening that she would be next. She has since gone into hiding and is residing now in the U.S.
I arrived in Amsterdam 6 months later and I remember walking with some friends in Dam Square and being told of the huge demonstration that had happened there for Theo van Gogh in reaction to this terrible incident months before. This was undoubtedly a big deal.

Today Ayaan is known as one of Europe's most controversial political figures, speaking directly against the detriments of Islam. My natural overly tolerant Canadian tendencies winced at reading her harsh accusations and criticisms of Islam in her book. She has not been one to withhold her controversial opinion and in turn has rose in popularity as one of the most loved and hated feminist voices of today. I admire her strength and courage.

I love autobiographies generally. I love hearing people's stories, learning their lives, sharing and relating to their thoughts and experiences. What I love about Ayaan is her honesty and directness. I felt as though I have had the honour of being taken into her confidence and share a deeply personal journey. She wrote so candidly, not withholding details that one might easily hide as embarrassing if not unimportant to the story. But Ayaan has simply lived and told her story. She is a product of and now a fighter against religious abuse.
I recommend this book as one that has deeply touched and taught me. One can learn much from it's personal journey, history and perhaps challenging (or other) point of view from a fellow fighter for social justice.

In Ayaan's sharp criticisms towards Islam fundamentalism I couldn't help but find parallels with fundamentalist Christianity. Yes, evil is done in almost any name. I felt an uneasiness thinking back on the Christian education I so often received growing up with a (too often solely) strict emphasis to 'save the lost!' (as thought that were my job in the first place. Didn't Jesus come to do just that?) and all the detriments attached to an over simplistic, non-relational, partially understood 'mandate of love.'
Ravi Zacharias declares that one cannot judge a religion based on it's abuses but rather on what it professes. Now we're getting onto a whole other topic. :) I believe religions are flawed and often harmful. They are human made. And though it may be harder for me to separate a religion from it's abuses I am most interested in what religions profess. Ayaan makes it clear that it is a critical question to ask, for in reality it affects us all.