{"id":2184,"date":"2013-02-19T17:06:36","date_gmt":"2013-02-19T21:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hnetalk.com\/?p=2184"},"modified":"2013-02-19T17:06:36","modified_gmt":"2013-02-19T21:06:36","slug":"losses-and-gains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/2013\/02\/19\/losses-and-gains\/","title":{"rendered":"Losses and Gains"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t read the obituary column in our local paper, and I pay little attention to celebrity deaths. But I was very moved by the recent HNE blog by our new blogger Geezer about the death of his mother: \u00a0I lost my mother the other day.<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was an excellent example of what a blog should be–personal and thought provoking. It immediately made me think of the period of time when I lost my own mother, much earlier in life, but with similar feelings. My mother had lung cancer and breast cancer that eventually metastasized. She went through seven years of treatment, relapses, remissions, recurrences. As a family we went through several cycles of hope and disillusionment that were very difficult, not just for my mother but for all of us. My mother never reached the stage of acceptance that might have allowed her an easier passage.\u00a0 She died a bitter, angry woman with no sense of closure or accommodation with death. Like Geezer, I experienced less of a feeling of loss than one of relief when my mother passed away. Like Geezer, I did not make it back in time for my mother\u2019s passing, and like him I have regrets about that.<\/p>\n

So what did I learn, what knowledge could I share with Geezer and others that might help them face similar trying circumstances? There\u2019s the Buddhist mantra: \u201cNo regrets\u201d, but that\u2019s a tough one to live up to in one\u2019s own life. Short of that high goal, what can we do as human beings to soften the pain of difficult life passages? Perhaps there\u2019s another Buddhist maxim that is easier to accept and live out: \u201cForgive everyone.\u201d As many self-help books will tell you, that process starts with oneself. Forgive yourself. Forgive others, yes, but forgive yourself first.\u00a0 You\u2019re not a bad person.\u00a0 You didn\u2019t mean to do bad things. You\u2019re just a human being, and therefore flawed, imperfect, something short of a Buddha or a Christian saint! It\u2019s okay. You\u2019ll do better next time.<\/p>\n

If I had it to do over again, would I have left the East Coast for the West Coast to start a new life, three months before my mother died? No. \u00a0I would have waited. At the time, it was just too painful to watch her decline, and I had been through it too many times already.\u00a0 But the past can inform the future without haunting it.\u00a0 Now I am dealing with the advancing age of my father, who is still mentally sharp at 93 years of age, but is physically tottery and obviously within a few years at most of his own death. And I do feel that I am handling his transitions better now. I am visiting him more often. I am setting aside the resentful feelings that sometimes arise when I am with him, about his failings and mistakes as a father. I am hopeful that he will live out his life in reasonable health. I am resigned and accepting of the idea of his death. As painful as my mother\u2019s death was those years ago, it is helping me to live in a better way now. I hope that Geezer and all who face similarly painful and difficult life events (and that\u2019s just about all of us) can find their way to peace and acceptance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t read the obituary column in our local paper, and I pay little attention to celebrity deaths. But I was very moved by the recent HNE blog by our new blogger Geezer about the death of his mother: \u00a0I lost my mother the other day.. It was an excellent example of what a blog […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mind-body-and-spirit"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6ZZxW-ze","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}