Love and Spiritual Transitioning

The time had come.  I had to go home, even though my heart and future, I'd hoped, were with Cairn.  My heart was also with my mother and she was transitioning.  I would not allow her to take that unknown journey alone.  So I embarked on the last journey that I would take to a heart that had been my home.  Cairn wanted to come with me, and even if he could, it was between myself and my precious mother.  I did not want the distraction.  All of my attention and focus would be trained on her.  That was the way that it had to be, for me, and for her.

"I can't be here and protect you completely from Storm."
"I know, but I can't protect myself from the regrets and pain that I'll feel if I'm not with her now."
"Understand that I can surround you with love and place you in a shield of protection, if you will. The less enlightened entities can't tolerate love and light." He said as he touched his fingertips to my neck as would a concert pianist caressing his instrument.
"But I am filled with love, for her, for the life that we shared as mother and daughter.  That will protect me." And then, in response to the emerald ache in his eyes, "I have to do this if I am to live with myself."
"And that is one of the reasons why I love you as I do."

Cairn understood that I could not be dissuaded and I understood that I was placing myself in danger.  But love is dangerous business and often takes us where we'd rather not go.  So we parted at the at Dublin airport with the knowledge that my all too mortal life might also be ending.

"Go with the power of love." Cairn said gently.  A part of me longed to linger and to hold him within myself again spiritually and physically.  But he was already deeply embedded in my being and a part of myself had become his, so I knew that we could never truly be separated, not really.

I raced into my mother's room at the hospice filled with the desire to see her luminous eyes alight with blue intelligence and humor. But they remained closed and she breathed laboriously floating in realms that I could only imagine but not yet visit.  I held her well known hand and spoke to her of going home.

"I'm fine," I assured her through the tears that clogged my throat and obscured my vision.
"Go see the heather in Scotland.  Slip into God's arms and let Him carry you home."

I read poetry.  I went to the bathroom to vent my anguish so that my selfish grief would not disturb the relentless trajectory of her journey.  I talked of her compassion and love.  Her service and sacrifice in the maternal role and of how I cherished the love for spirituality, the arts, poetry, beauty, that she imparted.  After all, she was an angel who was too delicate for this earthly comedy.  Her wings had been singed by her passage here but now it was time to go home.  I saw her radiant, youthful beauty in my mind's eye and held that image, that reality for her.

Honestly I wept for what hadn't been and for what could never be as much as I wept for what we'd shared.  I mourned our imperfect personalities that were often not in sync and I was humbled by the loyalty and love that painstakingly built a bond that would transcend time and separation.  I longed to hear her voice once more but the time for that had also passed.  I'd wished that I'd videotaped her, as i'd often promised myself that I would do.  But the tomorrows that we always feel are assured had been spent. So I did what was left for me to do, I loved her and spoke gently of my gratitude and love.  I waited.