Mother's Day: Celebrating with Your Departed Mother's Presence

How normal is that? Extremely so, if you are open to new-thought concepts, and to my experience, that our departed ones live! They are able, willing, and already communicating with us.

For those of us who have lost the earthly form of our beloved mothers, the thought of Mother's Day may jolt us, swept up as we are into something surreal. Are we truly about to face our first, or again, another, Mother's Day, motherless -- without our mother beaming radiantly from the heart of it?

Can we possibly face this day with an emotion that is not sorrowful? Yes. We can sweep away sorrow, supplanting the heavy illusion of separation for the light of truth.

What If, just this moment, you play with the idea that there is no "before death," or "after-life." What if there is, what I experience and call, only the "inter-life," a continuing relationship between those in form (that's us) and those in a formless state (our so-called departed kin). Moreover, what if from the moment of passing, the latter keep reaching out to us, intent on comforting, inspiring, guiding us? For whatever its value to you, I speak now from my heart, my experience, my understanding.

Five keys to connecting with your mother on Mother's Day and every day: (1) Look at your own mind in a new way: The mind is always open. That means, somehow we have grown up assuming that the mind is private, a closed channel. Not so.

Those with whom we bond, whether on earth or having passed, have access to our personal channel. They bear gifts of divine love and wisdom; they vibrate now in a formless state of joy. However the passing, whenever the passing, Divine love embraces them. They feel happiness in a far greater capacity than most of us in earthly form can demonstrate. In the course of a day, watch, be attentive. Somehow, always uplifting, a thought, a voice -- that is not yours -- a comment, remark, question, reply, is weaving itself in, through, behind, your mundane inner chatter. Your departed loved one speaks!

(2) Be the sign; don't look for signs: Be pro-active. Why must you wait, like a dejected teen-girl of yesteryear staring at a non-ringing phone, awaiting her latest crush to call? Change your thinking. Perhaps it's time that you begin to reach out, that you start to show your serious intent to connect. Let go the tendency to dismiss what flows across your mind as idle fluff from the unconscious. Spend a few moments, breathing softly, sitting with eyes closed, acknowledging your beloved Mother. If your raw grieving season has faded, and you feel you can look at her photograph and smile, not sob, then do so, gazing with love, radiating love to her. Feed your connection. By closing off the possibility of ongoing contact, You in effect have become the departed loved one. Your mother will never feel cut off from you, but how much more blessed, excited, gratified she feels when gradually, wondrously, you begin turning yourself towards her again, in real dialogue.

(3) Mull over the benefits: Yes, benefits, not blessings-in-disguise, per this new form-and-formless rapport. There are no genuine rules of the universe that prevent a mother-daughter relationship from continuing. Ask yourself, who told me personality dissolves, that contact is impossible, and more importantly, why did I believe it?

If you resonate to the truth, that divine love is our birthright, then your present relationship with your mother can only increase in love, warmth, closeness, understanding. Divine love has not stolen away your mother to teach you some sticky karmic lesson, to help you become independent, to force you to make a decision. It's not about you. It's about respecting your mother's choice. It's about your mother's saying yes to divine love,for higher purposes, or else she would have stayed in form (Oh yes, upon passing, each have that choice, which is why so-called miraculous recoveries manifest, linked to every spiritual being's ability to access to alternate universes). Too much philosophy for right now. What you might do well to contemplate is this: Your mother's passing is about your accepting her realization, that her access now to greater wisdom and love and joy will reap an iridescent beauty, for her life and for yours, for you two are connected. So ironically, it does become about you, in terms of undisguised blessings. And at least from your mother's perspective, the connection is never broken. A gain, not a loss.

(4) Embrace your new path now: An old saying holds true, that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Just as you discover the importance of honoring your mother's choices, she in turn heartily endorses yours. You may feel free these days to choose a path with a keen sense of joy, as you acknowledge one who nurtures you. What road, idea, goal, dream appeals to you? It's for you to ponder, traverse and/or materialize now.

(5) Stay In Touch: On Mother's Day, often churches and stores offer you, the visitor, a choice of color in the holiday carnation they wish to bestow: red, for "living" mothers; white, for those who have "gone." If you ever revert to doubting that your gone-only-from-physical-sight mother exudes Life, consider this: The Universe wouldn't dare snuff out mothers on an indifferent whim. If continuing life had never ever "been," some feisty mother on earth would have compelled spirit/universe/God to create it. I don't want to remember my mother; I want to reciprocate, relate to her, communicate. With brisk cadence my heart pumps, "she lives, she loves," and memory must defer to aliveness, to the normalcy of ongoing dialogue, within the space created by the process of breathing quietly. We seem to meet, she and I, in that synaptic cleft between earth and heaven, ever signaling mutual love. I want to hold firm the re-attached spiritual umbilical cord, which at times I'd forgotten is ours forever.

Memory has its place. When I awaken upon the Mother's Day to come, probably I shall recall, as I sometimes enjoy doing, a family story. My mother would tell me often of a Mother's Day, buoyant and beautiful, "the best ever," when she was rushed to the hospital, giving birth to me. Happy Mother's Day, dear mother, the archetype in my life of heartwarming solicitude. Here's a bouquet, to honor how you are, Love Magnified, and also to cherish how you were, here are your favorites, wild cornflowers, bright blue to match your eyes, and a few wisps of cornsilk, reflecting the fair hue of your hair during your prime, that blessedly long blossoming season. Also, Mother, a carnation. It's red. Blessings to mothers everywhere!