A Lesson in Love & Loss from My Mother, Teresa.
Sorrow, Mi Madre
Twenty years ago today
Never forgotten
(My mother in the mountains of New Mexico in an outfit she made)
I write about my mother, quite a bit. She passed away twenty years ago today in New Mexico. I suppose the act of writing keeps me close to her. I think about her everyday. When I have a despondent moment in New York feeling utterly alone- I imagine her arms wrapping around me, and whispering “It will be alright Maya. You have all the strength you need inside.” Once again I am fortified.
The loss is easy to remember, but it is better to focus on what she brought me in those brief years. She taught me how to sew. She use to play Tina Turner, Chaka Kahn, or Earth, Wind, and Fire records in the living room. She would make my brothers Mondrian and Matisse disco dance with her as I watched and laughed at their reluctance (they quickly came around and relished the dance moves). My mother loved to bake. I would sit in the kitchen with her and watched as she made a loaf of bread from scratch. She was a jewelry maker and a seamstress. She would sing aloud while she was creating at her work bench housed inside of our garage. She would take my brothers and I to the mountains to visit her friends. There I discovered my love of nature, and silence. I would watch the fog settle on the mesas, drink tea, and eat her fresh baked green chili corn bread. I would pick pine nuts off the tree with her, trying to avoid another nasty spill into a pile of cactus’. She would read to my brothers and I every night at bedtime. The stories spun like tapestries in my mind before I would drift off safely to slumber.
She loved to laugh and she would most all of the time, despite being a single mother left to raise three children on her own.
She was beautiful and elegant. She took pride in her appearance. Colorful clothing (that she made) and French perfume.
She never felt sorry for herself, save those low moments in Chemotherapy. Even through her anger she would still manage to find humor in it all.
The memory of her shows me why love is so powerful. Just thinking of her at any moment of the day can move me to tears, not just because I miss her, but because my love for her is so powerful. It encompasses me. Through her, I know how to love. I know generosity, I know strength, and passion for life. I am beginning to learn patience, which I know is a lesson my mother sought to teach me.
I know my life changed forever the day she left this earth. Sometimes it brings a great deal of anger. Then I quickly put that away and remember my connection to all living beings, who suffer, and I am humbled by it all. Complaining is foolish. The gift my mother has left me is to remember that she fought for her life. She knew it was precious. So I wish for the memory of her life to be imparted to you, all my friends world wide- love your life, even the difficulties because it is apart of the experience as is joy, and I hope you all have more of that. Beso- Maya
(My mother in the jewelry and clothing she designed with my grandfather at his book release party ‘Tradition & Innovation in The New Deal’).
