Our Inner Light
My mother (pictured left aged 90years) often asks me “How did I get like this”, I usually tell her “you got to 99 Mum (100 years on 8 March 2019 !!!), you’ve done so well and although I know you can’t stand or walk you still have a quality of life, able to chat as family and friends visit”. I believe it is important to keep positive in the face of a negative situation, even it it all seems hopeless, it is important not to let your loved one sink into the darkness which awaits the depressed mind, even if they challenge your positive stance in a miserable situation, it is best to keep everything ‘light’, always coming from love and compassion, both attributes which do not recognise darkness.
I often guide my mother into positive thoughts saying......“Inside you Mum is the same shining light that was there as you first stepped off the boat that arrived in Liverpool from Ireland, when you were just sixteen years old, the same shining light that was inside you as you stood on the kerb looking in wonder as cars drove past you outside Kings Cross Station in London, dressed in your best frock, white socks and black shiny shoes, the same shining light that was inside you as you moved through the war years, the Blitz of London dressed in your Red Cross uniform, helping others from the rubble. That light followed you through your marriage to Dad, the birth of my brothers and myself, your thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties, arriving with you here in your nineties, still shining, still bright,. I know your body has aged and you have lost nearly all your independence but try to hold on to that inner light, it is who you really are, imagine yourself aged thirty again, if these were your favourite years, because you are still that person, still that shining light”. Mum sometimes gives me a strange look, trying to acquaint with what I am saying, slightly cheered by the thought of being young.
Over the years my mother often asked me the same question “Do you really think there is a Heaven?”, I used to smile as I said “Mum...how can you ask that, it is everything that your faith teaches you”, but I know that whilst many people have a strong faith in their God, there are times when doubt creeps in because we ‘believe’ in something that appears to be intangible, it takes strong conviction to wipe away doubt. (ok ok, those in the back row reading this thinking 'oh no, she's off again!!!", just be patient please, no picking up the pop-corn ready to leave hastily through the nearest fire exit.....smiles...., I'm bringing this subject in now as I'm worried about my Mum and I guess I know her time is near, whether soon in weeks/months/life years or light years)......In those moments where my Mother seeks to understand more I reassure her that she is more than the body and she sees my conviction as I tell her my understanding of ‘heaven’, where we go when we pass from this existence, also reassuring her that my Father and my brother Michael and all those she has loved still exist, albeit on another frequency / level of reality, one which is difficult to comprehend in our limited understanding, an understanding and limited capability where we only see an eighth of what exists, it is as though we are looking at life through a funnel, it is only when we pass over that our consciousness expands and we ‘realise’ how much has been hidden from us, hidden because we have to be allowed to walk our lives in our own ways, to move through that ‘schoolroom of life’ I mention in my book, to learn the lessons and then ‘Go Home’, hopefully with flying colours. I often put my urge for knowledge down to the fact that I want to know everything whilst I’m walking this life, I don’t want to get to the other side, look back and wish I knew what I would then know, does that make sense?
I am fortunate in that my mother trusts me, trusts my ‘opinions’, which are ‘solely’ mine and whilst understood by many similar souls, may not be understood or believed by others, however, this is of “no concern to me, I hold my faith near” and it is enough that in sharing my thoughts about life with my Mother I manage to lighten her mood, giving her hope, hope that I am right and she has nothing to fear when her turn comes to "Go Home".
Sending love and light to you, Dear Reader....... Patricia