Grief,

 

I experience a sense of emotional pain, because my mother has died. The feeling of loss comes and goes in waves. My estranged family lives in the Netherlands, but I live, far away from them. I want to reflect on the fact, why I have kept my distance, basically ever since I immigrated to the United States, in 1999. Although I am sad, I feel okay. I have continued with my Embodied Language (EL), which none of them are interested in. My EL is beautiful, and it is the way I live my life.

 

I honor my mother, by mourning her death, but I do, what I have always done: I give attention, to whatever asks my attention. By talking out loud with myself, by writing about it, to myself, I am aware of the subtle changes in my body, which was born from the body of my mother. I also reflect on my own death and the love of life, beauty and goodness, I inherited from her.

 

When I am no longer alive, perhaps some of the things I have said or written, may still be read or heard by someone, who knew me or someone who never knew me. What I leave behind, isn’t offspring, but language, which, probably, isn’t going to affect many people, if anyone at all.

 

I am surprised, to be suddenly reminded, that I read or heard some story, that, the Buddha and those devoted disciples, who, presumably, had attained supreme perfect enlightenment, felt no grief at all about anything, but I realize, this is total nonsense. If you love, there will be grief. Their so-called enlightenment was without love, because their Disembodied Language (DL) was never properly addressed, but simply rejected. In the name of meditation and prayer, people have turned their backs on real communication.  

 

My EL works for me. I am sad, I wasn’t able to have it with my mother. Luckily, my wife Bonnie, and my friend AnnaMieke, know I had to go my own way. Who of us will survive the other? We don’t know, but in the end, we all die. In death nothing matters anymore. When people would say: she is in a better place now, because she is no longer suffering, they still make it seem, as if something continues. Surely, there is no better place in death. Only while we are alive, can we be in a situation, which is either tragic and problematic or enjoyable and enhancing.

 

In DL, we say, there’s nothing to say or to write anymore, as the language is gone for the person, who used it. All the experiences are gone too, for the person, who was said to have these experiences. However, in EL, there never was any agent, who had these experiences. In EL, we go beyond our language, and, thus, we die, while we are alive. In DL, by contrast, we say: may she rest in peace, but she is no longer here, she is dead, and everything, which once was, is no more. Death is – with our common death-denying DL – always for the other, but, paradoxically, not for the person, who has died.

 

I cannot experience my own death, other than while I am alive, but only my ongoing EL can reflect that. My mother said: I have the feeling, I don’t have much more time, as she felt her life was coming to an end. Also, the death of others didn’t make her overcome her struggle with life. Quite to the contrary, she dreaded, that all of life had to come to an end, because she wasn’t resolved about herself. She was always busy caring about others but had no time or energy to care about herself. We can call this – with our usual DL – selfless love, but her life was full of sacrifice, suffering, regret, frustration, bitterness and resentment.

 

With DL, people say: the only thing which will lessen grief is time. With EL, I say: why should my grief be lessened? It simply is there. I let it be there. Grief is a door, through which I enter into a sense of eternity. Eternal love and eternal grief are two sides of the same coin, called life.

 

As child, I often acted out and caused grief for my mother. I many times upset with her, as she unloaded her negativity on me. Although I was the black sheep of the family, I was also the most sensitive, and the most traumatized by all the dysfunctionality, going on in our family. I repeatedly told her, she deserved better, but I felt helpless and guilty, because I couldn’t give it to her. I have always felt like a big burden on my mother. Now that she has passed away, I feel relieved. I didn’t realize this while she was alive. I don’t feel any remorse or that I should have done better. I am happy, not to have her weight on my shoulders, as I felt responsible, although, of course, I wasn’t. My way of being responsible, was to find my EL.

 

My domineering father, forcefully, punitively, and humiliatingly, again and again, let me know, that I should behave like he told me, because it was… for my mother. The harder I tried, the more I failed. My easily agitated father acted as if he was God in the house and my mother lived in his shadow. Surely, she complained a lot and I hated that about her, as it made me feel so bad. I used to feel guilty, as there was nothing, I could do to alleviate that, and my siblings were conspiring against me, since I seemed to have caused so many problems.

 

Thankfully, my mother’s German mother was very dear to me and, not surprisingly, my mother disliked her own mother very much. My grandmother was, like my father, domineering, but she was very confident and capable. Moreover, her way of being right, was because she was assertive and proud. My grandmother loved me and, yet, my mother also had her sensitivity, but she couldn’t deal with it to her own benefit, as my grandmother did. My grandmother was more of a fighter and my mother was more of a victim.

 

Probably, I am such a sensitive man, because of my mother and my grandmother. In the eyes of my father, I never became the man he wanted me to be. He was enraged when I told him, that Bonnie and I didn’t want to have any children. I have always felt, my mother knew me more than my father, although she never had EL with me. She stood by and hid behind my dad, who exploited her emotional vulnerabilities. I grief the loss of my mother, but also that my family never wanted to have EL with me. Strangely, I feel closer to my mother than ever before, as a burden, I unknowingly carried has been lifted.