Erase and Replace; Everything Is Temporary, Even Me

Sometimes life takes you directions you had no idea you could ever go. I’m feeling really raw right now. The loss of a former student to suicide, the loss of a childhood/young adulthood friend, the loss of a musician friend who I’ll never be able to hear again on this side of the tracks. And the losses of dreams, of an expectation of how life will play itself out. And under it all is this silent constant – a mourning for the mother that I used to know and the realization that she can no longer surf facebook, that she is changing more and more and I’m having to learn painfully how to let go of the one person I never ever want to let go of.

It’s all causing a lot of self-reflection. Even more so than usual. And in the mix, sprinkled in, are other life circumstances that keep pulling me and trying to twist up my heart. I’ve thought how ultimately? Yes, we’re all individual, but mainly, we are REPLACABLE. We like to think we are special. That we are different or unique. And granted, I believe we are to some degree, but there’s this common thread of insignificance that also remains in play. Each of us is simply a number. Here for such a short period of time. In each other’s lives temporarily.

Mothers can become erased by time, disease, distance, miscommunication, misunderstanding. Another mother can walk in. A wife or husband can be disregarded, and another enter the picture. A child can go missing, either deliberately or not, and another can come in and melt one’s heart. A father can leave or be pushed away, another be introduced. A lover can be taken for granted or forgotten or mistreated, another walks in the door. Layer by layer, I feel life has forced me to LET GO. Let go of what isn’t really real. And one of those things is a fairy tale I’ve always held; that someday I would be the difference. I would be noticed as irreplaceable. I would be cherished as “one of a kind”. But I’ve had to put on my big girl panties as age and time and circumstances have played themselves out. And I’ve had to reach deep inside and find that nothing and no one remains intact and solid and concrete. We all cling to that notion. But in reality, we’re as fluid as the mist that creates the rainbows. We shine for awhile in each other’s eyes, but someday vanish into memories held. When this first hit me today so clearly, I literally cried. Then I searched further and found some kind of comfort in the fact that life is all about change and creating itself new. And the easier it is to let go of what we think we see and embrace that reality, the more complete is our own enlightenment and our own personal power. Only I have the ability to know every ounce of my own worth. And only I have the ability to recognize it in everyone else… even those who hurt, destroy or knowingly or unknowingly break me apart. And that is where I came face to face with the strength that is labelled “grace”. One by one we are a collective unit, held in place by gravity and time for maybe, if we’re lucky 85 years. Ever replacing and being replaced with the hope that during the process, we manage to make a slight difference in the life of another human being.