LOSING MOM - Part 35

“Who’s been talking to your mom about energy?”

The chaplain’s words ricocheted around my head like so many bullets, their force sending pulse waves of fear straight to my core.

Oh my god oh my god oh my god. My heart beat frantically, my face flushing guiltily as I realized, with absolute horror, that the person the chaplain was asking about was me! I was the one who’d been talking to Mom about energy!

I sat there mutely, scared to say a word, my mind racing to think if there was a way out, any way out, from having to admit, to this chaplain of all people, that it was me who was to blame. That somehow it was me who was responsible for my mother’s spiritual crisis! How could that be?

Every fiber in my being was telling me to run, to get away from that chaplain and the impossible fact that I’d done something, no matter how unintentional, that hurt my mother.

Don’t say anything! A voice screamed in my head. She doesn’t need to know it was you! It’s none of her business what you talk to Mom about!

But you have to tell her! Another voice cried back. Don’t be such a chicken! That chaplain’s not the boss of you! You didn’t do anything wrong!

These voices were definitely not strangers to me - they’d been around for years, arguing inside my head whenever I’d done something I perceived might get me into trouble. There was Scared Voice, the one forever panicking and trying to find a way out of whatever it was I’d done wrong. Then there was Brave Voice, always pushing me to stand up for myself and do the right thing.

The first time I remember hearing them was when I was maybe 14 or 15, and Mom found a pack of cigarettes in my coat pocket.

She’d just come back from taking the dog out one random weekday evening and, walking into the den where I was watching TV, stood staring at me pensively. I was just about to say ‘What the heck, Mom?” when I noticed the coat she was wearing.

Uh oh. Rather than the oversized down vest she usually wore to walk the dog, for some reason Mom had on my navy blue blazer, the same one I’d worn to school that day. A shiver of alarm shot through me as I watched her slowly reach into the front pocket and, without saying a word, pull out a half-empty pack of Tareyton cigarettes.

She held them out to me at arms length, the crushed cellophane wrapper crinkling in her fingers.

“Are these yours?” she asked in her I-will-brook-no-nonsense-from-you-young-lady tone of voice.

I sat there paralyzed, my mind racing desperately to think of a reason why I would have cigarettes in my pocket if they weren’t mine.

Tell her they’re someone else's! I heard Scared Voice urge loudly in my head. Tell her you were just holding onto them for someone else and forgot to give them back!

No, no don’t say that! Brave Voice, equally loud, countered back. Then she’ll want to know who, and you’ll get someone else in trouble! Just tell her they’re yours...be brave, Peggy!

But if you tell her they’re yours then you’ll get in trouble! Scared Voice warned frantically. She’ll be so mad!

God, I wanted to lie so badly! I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing the disappointment in Mom’s eyes, and then even worse, in Dad’s, after he found out. I’d never been caught doing anything really wrong before, and I was scared they might not see me the same way if they knew I wasn’t who they thought I was.

Of course, lying straight to my mother’s face was definitely the worst thing I could do, so scary as it was, I listened to what Brave Voice was telling me, and confessed that yes, the cigarettes were mine.

“Well…” Mom paused, and I watched her nervously from my seat on the couch, unsure what would happen next. Would she ground me? Lecture me?

But much to my surprised relief, she did neither. Instead, she slipped the pack of cigarettes back in the pocket and turned to leave, saying pointedly, “I’m glad you were honest, but I really wish you wouldn’t smoke. It’s a terrible habit.”

So yes, the two voices screaming in my head as I sat there mutely staring at the chaplain were quite familiar, though rarely had they both been as loud and insistent as they were that day. Although I’m pretty sure I’d never been so scared about something I may have done wrong before, either.

And I was definitely scared. Scared that if I told the chaplain it was me I’d somehow get in trouble for talking to Mom about something I didn’t fully understand, causing her irreparable harm at the end of her life. So just like my 14-year-old self, I really wanted to listen to Scared Voice and not say anything. It was none of the chaplain’s business, right?

Hold on one f...ing minute, Brave Voice suddenly broke through the din in my head, so firm and resolute it was impossible to ignore. It’s okay, Peg. You’re allowed to believe what you believe. You’re allowed to talk to your Mom about anything you want!

I glanced over at Lib who was watching me closely, worried, I’m sure, that I was doing exactly what I was doing - blaming myself for our dying mother’s spiritual crisis. But I could tell from the look on her face she was annoyed with the chaplain, too, so I sat up a little straighter and took a deep breath.

“Um, that would be me,” I confessed uneasily, not sure what kind of reaction to expect. “I’ve talked to Mom about energy a lot.”

The chaplain looked at me in surprise.“You don’t believe in God?” she asked incredulously.

Wait, what? Her question caught me so off guard it took me a second to answer. What the heck did my believing in God have to do with talking to my mom about energy?

“Yes, of course I believe in God,” I said, somewhat defensively. “But more as something bigger than myself,” I added, waving my hands around vaguely, at nothing in particular, “More like the source of everything.”

“What you need to understand,” the chaplain began, totally ignoring what I’d just said, “is that your Mom has believed in God her whole life, and that when she died, she’d be met by Jesus. She doesn’t know how to connect that with the idea that everything is energy.”

My heart froze. Hearing the chaplain use the same words I’d used in my letters to Mom less than 6 weeks before shook me to my core. How many times had I said to my 88-year-old mother that ‘everything is energy’ as I’d tried to explain, using my (very) loose understanding of quantum physics, why I wasn’t scared of death, so she shouldn’t be either?

Mom! I’d written excitedly after she’d asked me if I thought death was a big, dark nothing. Death isn’t a big, dark nothing because it isn’t an ending! Quantum science has proven that everything in the universe is energy, so that means we’re energy, too! And because energy can’t ever be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed, then we can’t ever be created or destroyed either! So when we die, we don’t disappear into nothing, we just transform to a higher vibration!

My poor mother! Had I confused her so much with my spiritual rantings that now she was scared to die because she didn’t know where she was going? Who did I think I was trying to explain something I didn’t really understand myself?

I’d never felt so small and uncertain in my entire life. What had I done?

Consumed with guilt and worry, I shifted uncomfortably under the chaplain’s curious stare, feeling a little like a bug under a microscope. I wasn’t quite sure how I was supposed to respond...did she expect some sort of explanation from me? Some sort of apology for talking to my mother about things I believed?

No way, I decided, a prickle of anger poking its way through the heavy layer of guilt smothering me. She doesn’t know me or Mom, I fumed inwardly, and I don’t have to explain anything.

Sadly, the remainder of that soul crushing conversation with the chaplain is blurred in my memory, and I can’t seem to bring into focus anything else that was said. What I do remember happening next is leaving Lib and the chaplain in the sunroom, and quickly ducking into the nearby bathroom, desperate to be alone for a minute to lick my wounds.

Pulling the heavy door shut carefully behind me, I braced my hands on the sink for support, staring at my face in the mirror, tears blurring the reflection that was staring back.

‘Oh my god,” I whispered to myself, ‘what have I done?”

A sudden knock on the door startled me, but hearing Lib’s voice on the other side asking if I was alright, I pulled it open to let her in.

“Don’t go there, Peggy,” she said firmly, seeing my tear-streaked face. Putting her hands on my shoulders, she looked me square in the eye and repeated, ‘Do. Not. Go. There.”

“But what if I did this to her?” I groaned. “What if I’m the reason she’s so confused?”

“It’s not you, Peg. You’ve done nothing wrong! That chaplain is horrible. Don’t listen to her. What you and Mom talked about helped her - it helped all of us.”

Wanting to believe her so badly, I gave my little sister a tight hug, then dried my eyes with the back of my hands as I followed her out of the bathroom.

“I’ll talk to Mom,” I resolved as we walked down the hall to her room. “Maybe if I explain that I still believe in God she’ll be less confused.”

“Maybe,” Lib replied, “but I’m not sure she’s really that confused. Maybe it’s the chaplain who’s confused.”

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

It’s been said that people come into our lives to teach us things we need to learn in order for our souls to grow, and I’ve often wondered since that day what the chaplain might have been trying to teach me.

At the time, I couldn’t see past the dense fog of emotion her presence triggered in me - layer upon layer of fear, guilt, grief, and even anger swirling inside me, making it hard to see anything but who I thought I saw...a shitty chaplain.

But as is true in any dense fog, it’s hard to see anything clearly unless you’re right smack up against it. And even then it might be hard to recognize, especially if you have no idea where you are.

I thought I knew where I was back then, and even thought I could give other people, like Mom, directions to get there. But it turned out that maybe I didn’t, at least not well enough to keep my bearings when I found myself lost in a fog bank.

A fog bank, by the way, that might just have had the unlikely shape of a very annoying Hospice chaplain.

To be continued...