Friend's Mother

I’m going to have to give a little case history of the time line in which I’ve known this one friend of mine so I can better get across what I’m trying to share in this story. My perspective in all this is unique and one I’m grateful for… though I'm not sure if I'll be able to present it properly.

I made a career shift four years ago to become an electrician for an international union…which is a story in its own right. In the union instead of having a set location of work each day we get sent out to different job locations and work on a particular job until we’re no longer needed, and then we move on to the next. This mainly consists of worksites within the same area of the province I live; unless the work is slow in our local then we have the opportunity to work wherever other work is available in other locals. Yep, that can even mean work in the Caribbean islands. :)

The first job I was sent out to was an automotive plant in a neighboring town. The first day I started was alongside another guy by the name of Mike, who was also just starting. We kind of bonded because of this shared experience of starting in the same career on the same day, and ended up working side by side for the first couple months of the job, which resulted in much talk in getting to know each other.

Through these many shared talks he would often referrer to this girl he started dating a couple months before we started talking in the union… he was definitely in love, and they sounded like a great match. But it wasn’t long before something else started taking up much of the conversation. His step father who was in a relationship with his mother for countless years suddenly decided to walk out on her with another female who he was having an affair with. To me this came across as a little poetic justice since Mike’s mother had done the same thing to his biological father many moons beforehand, but really it's not my place to say. Anyway, this turn of events seemed to destroy my friend’s mother… I was constantly in disbelief over the stories he kept telling me about the things she was doing. Things like spray painting profanities on her ex’s car, an attempt at suicide, constant radical guilt trips on the people who were trying to be there for her, the loss of her job…

Due to an eventual increase of man power on the job we were working at, our time together started to become scarcer. We were putting together a new car line in a local Cami plant… the Chevrolet Equinox. This separation ended up leading us in two completely different paths in our union experience over the following three years. I never went into the electrical field to make a life long career out of it, it was just the right thing at the right time sort of thing, so I’ve always been geared to see and learn as much as possible in the shortest amount of time, where Mike on the other hand just seemed to enjoy a more steady paycheck and routine… which is totally understandable. Give me a self sustaining vocation and I might be the same… well not totally. Coincidentally, though, our lives did seem to manifest our preferred experiences.

After we ended up on different jobs we still made the effort to talk intermittently to keep up on the happenings in each others lives. It wasn’t until we met in school three years later that we actually seen each other again. During this three year time period, including the time in school, it seemed things for his mother were only getting worst… I guess maybe not in the radical event sense like losing her job and such, but suicide attempts were still there, and she was really starting to be a major stress burden on her family … and the whole family has always sounded to be very supportive! In school Mike seemed somewhat jadedly desensitized to the whole thing. Thankfully he still had nurturing things going on in his life to balance things out, like an engagement to that girl he met just prior to us having met.

It was shortly after school was finished, roughly thirteen moths ago, that I received a wedding invitation in the mail for his wedding. At that time I had a unique job scenario on the go building a wind farm an hour away from my current residence, so I actually bailed on the wedding. But I did manage to make it to the reception where I was finally able to put some faces to his stories.

After the wedding it wasn’t ‘til this past fall that we seen each other again. It was during a two week shut down at a near by parts plant that consisted of much overtime and three separate shifts. I was put on the afternoon shift while he was put on midnights, so we really didn’t talk that much, but it was around this time that he told me his mother was in a new relationship. I’m pretty sure it was shortly after the wedding that she met the guy… or maybe she had met him just prior to… I’m not to sure. He did say that she started to improve just before meeting him, anyway, which makes sense…

I had only spoken to him once or twice after that job, mainly about work related stuff, and the last conversation I had with him must have been mid to late November… until a few nights ago. It’s this recent conversation that mainly influenced me to write this out. You know those rushes you get when spiritual sensors are being tweaked… well that’s what I was experiencing during much of this conversation with him. I was the one that phoned him, and we just started talking as normal about our work situations and about him having recently bought a house, until I came to ask him how his mother was doing. After I asked him, he went on to tell me that she was dead. Right there, I had another one of those “What!” moments… like talk about something you’re not expecting to hear…

Of course I immediately wondered if she finally succeeded in committing suicide, but instead of asking that directly I ask a more appropriate and general question of what happened. Turns out she died of breast cancer. Now I’ve kept a fairly consistent and open relationship with this guy for some time, and I don't ever remember hearing anything about any cancer!

I guess this is how it all happened. Turns out his mother was in amazing spirits just before she was diagnosed, she had really found someone special in her new partner, and things were going great for her in all areas of her life. Over Christmas Mike was saying how much healing had taken place in the family over what had transpired through the years prior. One of the things he told me was her determination to finish this bedroom set she was making for him and his wife to be given on Christmas day… drapes, bedding and the like. She pulled it off, too. Anyway, I guess right after Christmas she found out that she had breast cancer, and after telling Mike on New Years day she ended up dieing sixteen days later… messed up or what!? That’s some extremely aggressive cancer we’re talking about!

As I was talking with him and hearing everything he was telling me, I naturally started to see everything in a very divine and poetic light… the rushes, I’m tellin’ ya! I was obviously empathetic to his position, but I couldn’t help but share my perspective. It was as if she was finally given her wish to die that she held onto for so long. But before she died it was as if everything was repaired in a way that left little ground for her family to feel burdened with guilt over what transpired the last few years, or have them see her in a negative light. The whole timing in which everything happened seemed to complete something. As if prayers were being answered on all sorts of levels…

For a few years there she wanted to die, that was the mentality she consistently held onto within her psyche… she hated life, and wasn’t grateful for much.

To me this whole thing really emphasizes not to judge what is good and what is bad in life, because things reciprocate. It’s as if in this case Mike’s mother had created too much life from a destructive mentality to have carried on living after a certain point.

The way I often look at things is that the answers to our true heart are always starring us right in the face, but we don’t see enough to see the fullness of them. To me this story is riddled with lessons, but one strong lesson is not to shut the door on your current experience… to listen to it with all your senses open. Stay open and honest to everything! Even those things that appear hellish, there is important lessons to be learned in all of them!