Another Excerpt from Part III – Becoming the Oldest Generation – Flying Back to Israel for Mom’s Funeral

… Part of me still thinks I will see Mom when I arrive. I imagine her in her room, the room I sleep in when I am there. She is changing her clothes. I see the deep green jade fish on her dresser and the small light green jade statue of Quan Yin. I think of greeting Sami the dog. I imagine the dust on the white stone tile floor and the cool marble top of the dresser that was Mom’s mother’s. Will it be passed on to Lainey and to me in its third generation of women? As Lainey said, we are now the oldest in our female line. Nothing stands between us and our mortality in our female lineage.

And my feelings seem to be on hold, in the air as I travel between these realities, a reprieve from the storm to come. I can’t quite grasp the vision of burying Mom, of Mom really gone. I know that my last trip prepared me, but still I feel unprepared. I am strangely calm, yet there is an odd excitement in my belly and my chest.

I am part of the human experience, part of the cycle of life and death that all beings experience.

 

©2016