Letting Go....
When I was pregnant with my son my husband and I used to muse about what he'd be like - we found out early on (thanks to my son's dad arguing with the technician) that it would be a boy. We picked out his name early on...Anthony. So my husband began talking to the baby inside of me and every time he did this, Tony would move inside of me. I practiced Yoga too - so my son must have felt a lot of love.
When after my son was born (he was about 10 months old)we went for a visit to Rochester, NY to see my husband's parents and bring them their long-awaited grandchild. We stopped at one point during the road trip to go into an antique store (I love antiques). I looked down for a moment and saw a tin that bore a striking resemblance to my baby boy. It was stamped with the image from Bessie Pease Gutman's painting 'The Awakening' and this was what it looked like:
I was amazed - *this* was what my little Tony looked like as a baby...we bought the tin then and there. I still have it somewhere....
Letting go...It's not easy, it's never been easy. I don't know why. You would think someone who had lost her mom as early as I did would be OK with loss.
I don't know why I find it so difficult. I don't think I am 'clingy' and perhaps it's a matter of 'empty nest' syndrome beginning to appear on the horizon of my life. My daughter is gone and soon my son will be leaving as well. While I view these life changes as a form of adventure I still 'hold on to' the people I love and I am 'attached' to them, despite my best efforts to recognise the futility in that. As a Yoga teacher I know better (or I should say as a fledgling Buddhist-wannabe); we should all become somewhat detached, as much as we can bear to manage I suppose.
When you are a passionate individual - when you love fervently as I seem to - the idea of letting go, or of allowing a person to move away can be tough and perhaps it stems from the loss; perhaps it stems from my being without my son for so long (his dad was custodial parent when we divorced); perhaps it's different with sons and mothers vs. daughter and mothers...who the hell knows...
All I know is I've been crying and he's been struggling and he's been trying to make his own way and become his own person and I guess it seems to him I am an obstacle to all of that as he strives to leave his parents behind and forge a new identity. I need to stop standing in the way. And all the while I am so overwhelmed by the sadness of losing him to the 'world'.
When he was little I used to have horrible 'visions'/dreams of my son being killed or hurt - the visions were always accompanied by a foreboding that something was going to happen and there was nothing *I* could do to stop it...to make matters worse, both my father- in-law and my daughter had the same sort of dreams about him. So I don't know why my visions were happening - whether it was my own sense of guilt over leaving him with his father and not being there all the time with him or my own sense of general 'loss' but then how to explain the others' same dreams? Weird and scary.
A friend once told me 'you will come to a place where there will be acceptance if such a thing happens to him.' I find this incredibly hard to believe, for how can you lose a child and accept it? I mean I am sure hundreds of people *DO* go on after losing their child, I just could not imagine me being able to; in fact I *knew* they'd have to lock me in a rubber room if I didn't outright kill myself. And I was pretty sure I'd kill myself if I lost him. Yet not my daughter...why? Because I wanted to kill her as a teen. LOL - sad but honest and horrifying at the same time. And now that I am fighting with him I am furious with him, with myself and incredibly sad as well because I always felt we had a better relationship than this...
Relationships change and sometimes they change for the better and grow and soemtimes they wither and die - I don't want our relationship to die - I seem to insist on some modicum of 'I'm the parent, you're the kid and you will treat me with respect' bullshit and I mean it - but it's failing and it's floundering and I don't know how to forge something new because I still think of him in terms of 'the boy' and not 'the man' I can SEE the man in him - but he's still my baby. He says he loves me, I know he does - but I know he wants nothing to do with me and it's more hurt (bruised ego?) than anything else. Can I learn the lesson I need to learn here? Not sure. I am furious with his father too because he's the root cause of much of this back-and-forth, using passive-agressive behaviour and pitting both of us against each other in order to maintain his 'favoured' father status with my son and it truly infuriates me and I am going to talk to him as well but I am not sure what good any of it will do. In the end what needs to happen is for my son to move out, get his own place in the world and see how life *really* is and then - if we are lucky - we can forge a new and better bond, one that will last beyond this time and space, one that will emcompass all the unconditional love that should be the hallmark of the parent/child relationship. One can only hope.
When after my son was born (he was about 10 months old)we went for a visit to Rochester, NY to see my husband's parents and bring them their long-awaited grandchild. We stopped at one point during the road trip to go into an antique store (I love antiques). I looked down for a moment and saw a tin that bore a striking resemblance to my baby boy. It was stamped with the image from Bessie Pease Gutman's painting 'The Awakening' and this was what it looked like:
I was amazed - *this* was what my little Tony looked like as a baby...we bought the tin then and there. I still have it somewhere....
Letting go...It's not easy, it's never been easy. I don't know why. You would think someone who had lost her mom as early as I did would be OK with loss.
I don't know why I find it so difficult. I don't think I am 'clingy' and perhaps it's a matter of 'empty nest' syndrome beginning to appear on the horizon of my life. My daughter is gone and soon my son will be leaving as well. While I view these life changes as a form of adventure I still 'hold on to' the people I love and I am 'attached' to them, despite my best efforts to recognise the futility in that. As a Yoga teacher I know better (or I should say as a fledgling Buddhist-wannabe); we should all become somewhat detached, as much as we can bear to manage I suppose.
When you are a passionate individual - when you love fervently as I seem to - the idea of letting go, or of allowing a person to move away can be tough and perhaps it stems from the loss; perhaps it stems from my being without my son for so long (his dad was custodial parent when we divorced); perhaps it's different with sons and mothers vs. daughter and mothers...who the hell knows...
All I know is I've been crying and he's been struggling and he's been trying to make his own way and become his own person and I guess it seems to him I am an obstacle to all of that as he strives to leave his parents behind and forge a new identity. I need to stop standing in the way. And all the while I am so overwhelmed by the sadness of losing him to the 'world'.
When he was little I used to have horrible 'visions'/dreams of my son being killed or hurt - the visions were always accompanied by a foreboding that something was going to happen and there was nothing *I* could do to stop it...to make matters worse, both my father- in-law and my daughter had the same sort of dreams about him. So I don't know why my visions were happening - whether it was my own sense of guilt over leaving him with his father and not being there all the time with him or my own sense of general 'loss' but then how to explain the others' same dreams? Weird and scary.
A friend once told me 'you will come to a place where there will be acceptance if such a thing happens to him.' I find this incredibly hard to believe, for how can you lose a child and accept it? I mean I am sure hundreds of people *DO* go on after losing their child, I just could not imagine me being able to; in fact I *knew* they'd have to lock me in a rubber room if I didn't outright kill myself. And I was pretty sure I'd kill myself if I lost him. Yet not my daughter...why? Because I wanted to kill her as a teen. LOL - sad but honest and horrifying at the same time. And now that I am fighting with him I am furious with him, with myself and incredibly sad as well because I always felt we had a better relationship than this...
Relationships change and sometimes they change for the better and grow and soemtimes they wither and die - I don't want our relationship to die - I seem to insist on some modicum of 'I'm the parent, you're the kid and you will treat me with respect' bullshit and I mean it - but it's failing and it's floundering and I don't know how to forge something new because I still think of him in terms of 'the boy' and not 'the man' I can SEE the man in him - but he's still my baby. He says he loves me, I know he does - but I know he wants nothing to do with me and it's more hurt (bruised ego?) than anything else. Can I learn the lesson I need to learn here? Not sure. I am furious with his father too because he's the root cause of much of this back-and-forth, using passive-agressive behaviour and pitting both of us against each other in order to maintain his 'favoured' father status with my son and it truly infuriates me and I am going to talk to him as well but I am not sure what good any of it will do. In the end what needs to happen is for my son to move out, get his own place in the world and see how life *really* is and then - if we are lucky - we can forge a new and better bond, one that will last beyond this time and space, one that will emcompass all the unconditional love that should be the hallmark of the parent/child relationship. One can only hope.
posted by Colette at 9:08 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home