Mikaela Castledine # 204 The light is not only at the end

For Sarah and Anna and everyone else...

It’s only when I physically type the words

losing your mother is a rite of passage

something dangerous and important that you pass through

that I truly understand it is an actual passage

an aisle a corridor a walkway a subway an underpass

that there are people at the end calling and reaching out to help guide you through

that there are people at the beginning fingers crossed for you thinking of their own journey to come

that there are people with you holding your hand

that the floor can be a conveyor to take you onward even when your feet have come to a halt

and that the light is not only at the end

For me

right now

the passage from mothered to motherless is the luminous tunnel of an underwaterworld aquarium

blue and green with curiosity 

with bubbles and bouyancy with tamed dangers,

a beautiful place of salt water pooling of prisms

of sighs of handfeeding of treading water

and always the strange grinding squeak of the moving plates beneath your feet 

that take you inexorably forward whether you are standing

are fallen

or are running hard back to the past