"Homage to a mother"
We are paying you a visit on the morning of what has become quite a commercial occasion: the celebration of Mother's Day. Far away from bouquets of flowers, cute drawings and other presents, we offer you this text of Françoise Porte written a few months after the death of her mother. This very moving text has already supported many of you through difficult times.
"Homage to a Mother" from which we offer extensive excerpts was first written for the 2012 newsletter. We have also assembled a small booklet with it that we keep reprinting as the simple words, vibrating with a grace’s humanity, touch hearts so much.
As we live through such peculiar times that have brought us all back to the source of our lives, we are invited to revisit our relationships and to savor the moment we share with our loved ones. We hope that Mary may steer these words towards those who are living or have lived such a moment in these months of hardship.
Danièle Valès
It is the 18th April, 5.20 a.m. and from my balcony where I have literally been drawn, I see in the west a setting moon, its roundness lightly blushed by the rosy light of the sun rising in the east. I have my camera in my hand, but hardly have I heard myself exclaim « Oh! », when the round, round moon begins to vanish from the sky, now lightly tinged with blue... I can just make it out in the distance. In spite of my regard fixed on the spot of the very soft apparition, it has quite naturally and with great elegance disappeared from my sight. However much I stare at the spot, I can no longer see it. My arm falls to my side. I have just understood that we cannot seize, take hold of « mystery, it is « mystery » that takes hold of us and leads us. My eyes, filled with strangely serene tears, let themselves drift slowly towards the east and discover a red line on the horizon, caressing the surface of a sea whose soft waves come to rest nobly on the sand.
This instant will remain linked indelibly to the deeply moving moment of the « disappearance » my mother’s who on the 13th of March, I saw « sink into the heavens » with the same discretion and unadorned elegance as that pink moon, vanishing into the still milky and yet incredibly transparent clouds. As if to underline what I have just written, two turtle doves have landed on the edge of my balcony for a few seconds and, in the same way as the moon, have flown off into the blue. This touches me profoundly. I must add, because I think it is necessary to make it clear, that I don’t have much liking for romanticism and am in no way attached to any belief in reincarnation.
What I have just seen so clearly, is simply, that there is no line of demarcation between heaven and earth; only the non-dualists, those « seers of God in the real » (as Florin liked to emphasize) would be capable of seizing the mystical dimension of this humble morning experience.
When I take my pen the following day, I receive on awakening what I had not taken in the day before : the luminous confirmation, in the visit of my turtle doves, of the mystical union in heaven of my parents, the very thing I had wanted to celebrate on the day of burial with the reading of a passage from « The Song of Songs » : « Come then, my beloved, my lovely one, come. For see, winter is past and gone. And the trees and flowers give forth their fragrance. » Yes, two turtle doves and not just one – which would still have been a lot! A phrase comes back to me, one written by M.H.M. on the very last page of my Golden Notebook when I was twenty years old: « God awaits, there, where the roots are. » It is given to me to understand only today and will have taken more than forty years to fully take in and at last make « my own » the words addressed to me by Marthe Robin then : « Oh, my little one, you will have to go right to tip of the roots. »
The feeling of being an uprooted person, which has always been with me, has disappeared. And precisely since the very long agony of my so intelligent and lucid mother, who until the end managed to work into my very skin, with a gentle and intense perseverance – what I had never understood – the assurance that I would never be alone in this world. I hear in a soft breath her sole interminable cry, because repeated a thousand times in a more and more imperceptible way, but in the intensity of her regard: « My dear little girl »! And if I add that at this very instant as I write this phrase « one » turtle dove has come to rest on my balcony, you will naturally believe that I am deranged! One cannot see signs, live a face in face with heaven in earth, except by pure divine grace. How true are the words of the little peasant girl, Marthe Robin, that I quoted above: « It is not because you will see signs that you will believe, it is when you believe that you will see signs. » Well then, I «believe»!
It is precisely because I spared no tears concerning the pain of the physical disappearance, that I experienced with all the more amazement this « visitation of the heart » which made them so close the one and the other! The amazement at such a humble experience however, to such a point that it seemed right to share it with those who dread the definitive separation or who are suffering from the inevitable separation.
How well I understand this dread, encountered so many times, until I found myself faced with the ineluctable. At the same time as the bite of pain I felt the caress of an invisible, but effective and active presence. When you are irrigated by spring water such as this, why search for something else to say other than that which rises from the depths? « Go and wash at the fountain », said Mary to Bernadette. It is exactly what I am experiencing as I write you these lines: it seems as if I am drinking deeply of this so fresh water of Massabielle and laughing I share it with you!
Because finally it is of good news that we are speaking: the mortal mud cannot cover the ever-bubbling source and it will surge up there where we least expect it. It is enough to scrape away the soil of our dense incredulity. Oh no! They are not far off those who have quit the surface of things, their rejuvenated souls would so much like to touch ours but our ingrained, old-fashioned “blindnesses” prevent us from feeling their delicate touch, true as it is that you cannot sew together an old piece of cloth with a new one!
I am strongly aware of the subtle danger of speaking in this way, because my words could be confused with the myriad of spiritualities of all sorts, which are much in fashion today and invade the media marketplace. The height of Omnipotence being to propose technical means for finding peace aa by oneself, while it is Another who gives it to us and that this peace which comes to us from Christ is of an entirely different nature. It is obvious that if I overlook his Resurrection, I can no longer experience, within me, the reunion from within with our loved ones, of which I spoke earlier.
However, there is no doubt that many non-Christian men and women of good heart have the experience of a certain intimate touching with their « departed », because the Risen Christ, in the secrecy of their hearts, makes them perceive a newness to which, later on, they will be able to put a name. They merit our respect, they receive a beginning of consolation but these authentic and humble experiences have nothing whatsoever to do with much-publicised parapsychological manipulations.
I believe deeply that one dies as one has lived, and that death is prepared for very early in the life of grace thanks to the « tingling » of a real interior life full of questioning, without which old age is, in fact, lived as a shipwreck Our existence which is by nature fleeting, is full of meaning. A certain familiarity with the near and far horizons of death, on condition of never being morbid, is the work of a lifetime!
A certain art of living and a strong intelligence are, I think, necessary for approaching the really important things with a smile. This is what my mother taught me.
I did not discover until the end of her life that she had been for me my great life teacher and that I owed her everything. I was confronted consciously for the first time with her greatness of soul when I believed I had to « protect » her from the announcement of my cancer by hiding the truth from her. She looked me straight in the eye and said: « I accept your cancer, I do not accept your lies. » Stunned, I discovered that everything becomes relative when one serenely reaches a great age, and that what would have been reason for great dread beforehand becomes quite simply the school of life.
If this woman, quite allergic to the religious environment, had not developed her interior resources, it is evident that the end of her life would have been a hell for herself and those around her. She was spared nothing: the loss of her bearings, the disorientation and unimaginable fatigue resulting from her innumerable more or less serious CVA’s or strokes throughout the years. Her lassitude became crushing, her so beautiful and astonishing memory faded, but her lively spirit was always there and until the day before her death, we were able to laugh together about « the things of life ».
A few months before her death, I noted down a few of her pearls of wisdom, which I have strung together for you, because they are likely to give light to the most sombre of lives.
One day when I had asked her if she was happy, she replied with a large smile,
« Oh! Yes... » I added:
-« You’re not bored? »
-« No, that, never! »
-« What’s it like inside you? »
-« It’s all golden! »
-« So, you already have one foot in heaven? »
-« That’s right! »
-« Between heaven and earth is it separated? » (I must tell you that mother
had never attended a retreat!)
-« But no, they’re all together. »
- (I act dumb) « Ah, so there is no heaven on one side and earth on the other? »
-« No, no, they’re together. »
-« But how do you know that? »
-« Ah, well I have the experience, that’s all! »
-« In the end, what do you feel? »
-« In the end, you want everything to be beautiful! »
-« There are so many people who think that old age is horrible! »
-« But no, it’s not horrible! » (indignant)
-« Because it’s the very end in itself of a rich experience and has become fundamental. That’s what I see in you. »
-« You see right. It’s exactly like you say. »
-« You, yourself don’t suffer from growing old? »
-« Ah no, not that. I know it’s the end of my life on earth, but it’s the good end! I am impatient to be on my way! »
One day, she makes an effort, looking at me she scrutinizes me: « WHO ARE YOU? »
With a sinking heart I return the question: « Who do you think I am? » And with a cry, she answers me: « You are my Mummy! » The ground shifts under my feet... But I realize in a flash, that this regression to the state of a little child in need of her mother, allows her to re-enter the far-off mental structures of her real childhood, and then, more profoundly
I feel that my mother revisits it through my mediation. It is a very deep approach to death.
So, I cradle her in my arms and rock her. « I am here, my little one, my darling, your mother is here. » I feel she is happy, and very much at peace. As for myself, I am literally knocked out: I grieve the loss of my own mother, and in my arms I have a little child. A wave of tenderness flows from the very depths of my heart; I find immense what we are involved in living.
A little later she resituates me: « You are my darling little girl », the only words she will be able to say up to the last moment! Oh! How much I appreciated these words and that she had recovered the memory of my identity, but I contemplate what the fact of giving a dear one the right to lose her memory represents. It is the sign of an infinite love, which puts the seal upon the relationship of eternity.
Several times, I speak to her about her loss of memory which for her is a terrible loss.
- « You don’t remember anything more than the essential things at present, and the essential is the memory of Jesus in you. »
-« Not completely, there is also the other a little more to the side. »
-« One day, the other will disappear, and you will have nothing but the
memory of Jesus. »
-« Ah, yes, it’s like that! »
-« When I speak about the things of the soul, do you understand within you?»
-« YES, within, I have a wider view when you speak to me. »
-« Wider in your whole life? »
-« YES! Wider everywhere! »
-« You know, I thank God for having given me such a mother and to be able to speak to you like I speak to you, because it is you who made me what I am to speak to you thus at the threshold of your death ! I am honoured to resemble you. »
And Mummy replies quite simply: « You are right! When I am dead you will have to listen well to me all the same! »
Another day, I find her immobile, her eyes lost in space, absent. I speak to her: « Mummy! When apparently nothing at all is going on in you, in fact something is happening, isn’t it? »
She comes out of her lethargy:
-« Oh! Repeat what you have just said. »
-« What I mean is that on the outside, we see you immobile, incapable of doing or saying anything at all, as if paralysed, and yet in the depths of you, there is movement, lots of things are happening, but you don’t have the words to say. »
Her face lights up suddenly: « Oh! yes, it’s like that! You, you have the words. »
-« And what you live within yourself, no one sees it from the outside. »
-« Yes, you! You see it! » And with a smile she goes back to sleep!
The page gets longer and I don’t wish to enlarge on the subject because I would need an entire book to tell you about my admiration and my recognition for those very elderly people who, like my mother, and Roger’s mother – who died last year – received an unction of goodness, in a state of absolute destitution. That « clairvoyance », fresh as childhood lets them see, beyond their great suffering, the illuminated side of the night.
Françoise Porte
October 2011
Excerpts from "Homage to a mother"
French to English translation by Christian Tordjussen
"Magnifique est le Seigneur", CD Tissage d'or 5 (Communauté de la Roche d'or)
To see the lyrics in French of the music "Magnifique est le Seigneur"