My beloved mother, Estrella, has passed away. I like to think that she has just left her physical body for other states of being. Estrella,
star in Spanish, she was my star. Although we didn't always agree, and particularly not about politics (I don't know the last democrat she voted for in a national election), I am her daughter. She was always interested in the other person, treated everyone with grace and dignity, rooted for the underdog (even if for whatever reasons she couldn't translate these prinicples into her electoral politics). My mother, my star, she taught me to stand up for my rights, to be kind, to work hard.
She lived the "American dream." Born in the provinces of the Philippines in 1927 to a single mother, she won a scholarship for graduate studies in NYC. Living in the International House, she met my father, a math student on scholarship from Karachi. They had both always intended to return to their motherlands. But love prevailed, against the wishes of their parents (there were even family estrangements over this union) and they married; had two children--me and my brother. My parents spent every hard-earned dime on educating us. They faced bigotry not only from white America, but also sometimes from their own ethnic/cultural groups for a "mixed" marriage.
My mother, my star, she was battling cancer and end-stage renal disease. We became all too familiar with many of the horrific aspects of the US healthcare system diaried by nyceve. We also encountered what can only be called age discrimation, and also what may be called disease discrimination. In the end, we may also have encountered medical malpractice precipitated by the prevailing attitude that my mother's life was not worth living. I also learned, as perhaps may of you have, that caregiving for a sick or elderly parent is not necessarily afforded the same respect, understanding, and even institutional support as caregiving for children.
Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, prominent psychiatrist and researcher, and prolific author has studied trauma and violence for over 50 years, and while his work focuses particularly on war trauma, and mass catastrophe, I believe that what is has to say about what he calls "survivor missions" is also applicable to survivors of individual or "personal" traumas, the kind we experienced, confronted with both my mother's illnesses and the inhumanity of our "healthcare" system. If you aren't yet familiar with Dr. Lifton's work, I recommend it to everyone--especially in these times; he has also written on the Iraq war.
Dr. Lifton writes, in The Future of Immortality and Other Essays for a Nuclear Age:
The impulse to bear witness, beginning with the sense of responsibility to the dead, can readily extend into a "survivor mission"--a lasting commitment to a project that extracts significance from absurdity, vitality from massive death.
I lost my mother, my star, so I am not confronted with a "massive" death in terms of witnessing a war catastrophe or crime, but it is a "massive" death for me in terms of my mother's importance in my life, both actual and psychic, and I believe that my mother's and our experience of the healthcare system is common, so that perhaps she represents an experience of the massive violence of our healthcare system.
Joe Hill, labor activist, executed after a controversial trial, wrote to his friend just before his execution:
Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize.
I'm with Joe's sentiment completely, but with a slight modification inspired by Dr. Lifton's understanding of "survivor missions." That is:
To mourn, organize.
As Dr. Lifton continues, this kind of mission or meaning-making, bringing significance to the chaos of grief through organizing (giving "inner form" and outer expression), helps to keep the traumatized one from "pathological grief":
Impaired mourning becomes equated with a more general inability to give inner form ... significance--to the death immersion, and therefore to the remainder of one's life ... Unresolved, incomplete mourning results in stasis and entrapment in the traumatic process. Survivors require expressions of grief and mourning if they are to begin to derive from their experience its potential for some form illumination.
To finish up this diary, let me say that through this past traumatic year and a half of my mother's illness in particular, dKos has been my community, my friend, my refuge. (And, of course, I originally came here to deal with the trauma of US politics in the era of BushCo!) Working full-time, and taking care of my mother, my real-life interactions were limited; my social being was growing more remote, but dKos buoyed my spirits (even when all the news was bad!) and I felt part of something; I felt understood; I felt I had a place, a community. When my mother died, I just wanted to immediately post my cry of anguish here to the community that means so much to me, but I'm glad that I've had a couple of days to think about and articulate how what I've learned from my mother and dKos go together.
Inspired by the need to honor my mother, and armed with much information and confidence that I've received through this incredible community on dKos, I think I can say that although my mother, my star is gone, a little light or star is born--and that's me! I'm going to translate my grief into activism for healthcare reform. I don't yet know exactly what form that activism will take, but I'll probably diary it every step of the way!