There's a funny little quiz/game/interactive element going around instagram – add your photo type question. The game is to add the first photo in your favorites album. I didn't do it, but I looked at what it was. Turned out to be a photo from 199-something of me and my mother traveling in Italy shopping for fancy leather gloves. Unintentionally twinning! The next photo is also from that trip. The fourth photo is her at Dove Cottage, a solo trip she took in the early nineties to her favorite place, visiting her favorite poet.
I decide to find a more recent photo of us and this popped up from a trip to Cannon Beach in 2019. Kind of twinning here too with puffy coats and neck scarves against the wind and cold of March.
There are quite a few of us two together in my favorites album. Interesting to see how often we were twinning – never intentionally I swear! And I never thought we really looked alike (my sister wins that award) but I do see a resemblance. Our hair was never the same color and I was taller, rarely do I see it in our faces but more often it might be noticing that it is her hands or feet that I favor, causing a double take. Others have shared that my mannerisms are hers, and I know and like that that is where our resemblance resides. (Plus the love of a red purse!)
Then and Now.
Now.
I have these photos from our adventures but not her.
Then.
I had her and wasn't really thinking about them as adventures.
Now.
I am on adventures and think about her, missing her.
Then.
I am fortunate to have had her through my 60th birthday.
Now.
I am sad we don't have a chance to celebrate our 65th/90th birthdays together. We thought we would since her mom made it to her nineties!
Then.
I didn't know what losing my mother would bring, at least in terms of grief. Is it something we ever consider? What our grief will be?
Then.
Her parents died at aged 95 (almost) and 92 (almost). We grieved but knew they had full lives and the grief had a different temperature. When my older brother died at age 46 (unbelievably in that same year) we grieved so deeply as his children lost their father, his partners lost their co-parent, our nuclear family lost its center, my parents lost their firstborn. He was the hub, our centermost connector.
Then.
Losing a sibling was the most intense and overwhelming time I had experienced. Didn't know anything more than the broken apartness we all were in.
Then.
When my aunt, her sister, died at 68 we grieved for my aunt's children and their families, for my mother and her brother, now alone in their nuclear family.
Then.
My stepmother died at age 70. For me, for all her children, her grandchildren and my father all grieving the loss of the family's heart, the matriarch, the core, and the stability we depended on. Hard, intense and overwhelming. And I felt deep pain of loss. And I felt guilt, I still had one of my mothers.
Then.
It happened, all my parents gone, the remaining three in one year. An accordion avalanche of a year. The last of my mother's siblings the year after and now nearly all of that generation gone.
Now.
Every moment, every breath I work through it.
Now.
They are here. There are reminders. Their children and grandchildren, their nieces/nephews, my siblings, my cousins. The mementos: books and art, their directives and lectures, their advice and guidance, their ancestry. Love.
Then.
Yoga brought me through. Sitting still, moving, lying down. Inhaling and exhaling. Letting others hold space for me. Supporting. Carrying. Letting me grieve as I needed. Releasing and accepting. Holding in and letting out. Crying, sobbing, weeping. All of it.
Now.
With my yoga practice I am still and I move forward. With my breath practice it is possible to simultaneously hold on and let go. Feeling what I can within yoga. Inhaling. Keep my grief. Pause. Exhaling and let go. Pause for myself. Pause to take in what I feel. Pause for breath. Gratitude for breath. Gratitude for yoga. Gratitude for the ancestors. Love.
Yogas citta vritti nirodhah
Yoga is the quieting of the mind
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter 1, Sutra 2
Note: Rebecca and her friend Monica are teaching a series together starting on February 18, 2025.