Opossum

Yesterday morning I buried a small opossum. He had been lying on my lawn for two days. Each day I examined him and checked whether he was dead or just playing dead as opossums do. After three days, I was convinced that he had well and truly passed on. He lay nestled on the lawn that I had mowed a few days before discovering him. He had a small smile on his face and looked as if he was sleeping peacefully. His tail was curled under his soft, whiteish, gray body. I wasn't sure if he was a toddler or adolescent. So, I took out the large gardening fork that is really good for digging deeply into the soft, cold ground underneath the Stewartia tree in the corner of my back yard. I dug deep among the sapling ferns that are beginning to sprout with the spring morning. Then I gently gathered up little opossum with a shovel, and carried him to his newly dug grave. I shed tears telling him how beautiful he was and how sorry I was that his time had come. After covering him up with the dark brown soil, I planted a small columbine sapling over this grave, and quietly sat awhile next to it, reflecting on the nature of death, passing on, and letting go. 

Just lately I realized that I have let go of a myth that I developed as the core of my emotional survival as a young child growing up in my family. Spending the summer a few months after my mother died last year writing a book about young children needing attention helped release me from a delusional reality that I have lived with for over sixty years. I had started thinking about this, and even wrote a post about my initial reaction to my mother's death exactly one year ago. What a coincidence, I thought, as I sat cross legged on the grass next to little opossum's grave. 

I had written that I had been waiting for my mother to acknowledge or validate me in some way right up until she died. But recently I understand that it is even deeper and more complex than that. It's true that I spent my whole life longing for her to notice me, which of course spilled over into all of my relationships, as I transferred that feeling to everything I tried to accomplish, or with whomever I tried to love. But in order to feel worthwhile, as I waited to be acknowledged, I developed a myth that, in fact, in secret I was actually my mother's favorite. With her death and the silence that came with it, I realized once and for all that the "secret," was mine alone. It was a fantasy - not reciprocal - not reality. Acknowledgement would never come. Indeed, I would have to do the acknowledging and validating my self.

What a release, as I discover that I am not waiting for nor seeking acknowledgement from others any longer. This feeling that I am good enough with who I am just as I am is strange to be sure, and new. I have noticed the shift in small, significant ways. For example, I take less selfies, and post less on Facebook. It hasn't been intentional. I just realized this, as I sat next to the little opossum's grave reflecting about the past months. Also, since last summer I have been less hungry. Consequently, I have lost 24 pounds weight.

More importantly, though, the feelings of longing, the constant ache as if I have some kind of hole in my soul, these have all abated considerably - therefore making way for a feeling of peace that has come over me. 

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Holding out for a sign