Who is Buddha?

It's you.
I'm not happy about this, but it's true- it's you.
I figured this out during the last full moon ceremony.
We were chanting the refuges or the precepts or something like that and I said the line: "Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it."
"F*#@" I thought to myself.
Buddha's way is unsurpassable.... that's referring to you. It's not the "way" some guy (Buddha) lived eons ago that is so "right" that it's unsurpassable, it's that YOU- who you are, your thoughts, your actions, all that stuff that you do that you have no control over- THAT is what is unsurpassable. You can't pass on your life, you can't go around it, you can't decide what crap you're going to say or do next, it's just gonna happen, you're gonna be you, whether you like you or not.
And then I heard myself say the next part of the line: I vow to become it.
"Double crap!" I thought to myself.
That's how I'm supposed to respond to this truth that who-I-am-is-inevitable: I have to become it.
I have to spend my time being who I am, regardless of who that is. I have to be in alignment with myself, stop trying to be someone else, actually become who I am.
Dude, this sucks.
I mean, I know that it's true. It makes perfect sense. If I want to live with less "suffering," then I need to stop going "against" things and instead try to be in accord or agreement with them. So vowing to become yourself, to give in to the fact that who you are is inevitable, allows you to live more in alignment with who you are- puts your effort into being you instead of fighting you. And this whole practice of "studying" the self is what supports you to see yourself so that you can actually become the self, become you.
So this vow- acceptance that who you are is unsurpassable so you might as well just become it- is about giving in, being true to yourself, trusting that who you are might be okay and that its kind of your responsibility to be it.

A friend's death

It is difficult to deny
your friend's death
when you are trying to decide what to wear
to her memorial ceremony.

When you are aware that on this day
Mother's Day
her husband and son
are doing something
and you wonder
what that something may be.

When last week
on her son's seventh birthday
you considered that it would be his first birthday
without her.

You wondered
if he asked
Where is she? Why isn't she here?
And you cried at the bravery
the tenderness
the absolute vulnerability
of his father's response.

Yet
Nothing has changed.

Her email is still in your inbox,
Her address pops up when you type the letter J.

The last time you saw her
is still the last time you saw her
and she was walking
and you were talking
about things like this
about how it would be
without her.

You knew it was coming
just not when it would come.

Tomorrow should be interesting.
She will not be there.
The first of your encounters
without her
her own memorial ceremony
without her
the celebration of her life
your first acknowledgement
of her death.

My mother is me

It turns out that my mother... is a fantasy.
This makes sense because my mother died, in late August, of 1977.
People die.
She is one of them.
She actually died.
She has not existed since that day, so she can't possibly be anything other than a fantasy.

Still, she has existed in my head, ever since.
I thought that existence was real.
I think I knew that the mother that I imagined as a six year old, the one in heaven, the one who hung out with the Easter Bunny and God, was made up. I think I figured that out the same way you figure out Santa Claus and all those other kid things. But figuring that out didn't stop me from thinking she existed. I'm not quite sure where I thought she was, but I know I thought she still existed.

So when this other one showed up, the mother I've been connecting with over the past three years, I really thought that she was real. I thought I was connecting with her. I thought I was actually feeling her. I thought I was finally getting to know her as an adult, as my mother, as someone like me.

But I was not.
How could I have?
She's dead.
It's all in my head.
It was all in my head.

About three weeks ago I got that she was dead. It wasn't a big 'aha' moment, not some earth shattering epiphany, more of a statement: she's dead. It was brief, I think it happened as I passed the photograph of her on my mantel but it felt like what it was: a fact. This is a wood floor. That person is dead.

I'm assuming that this acknowledgement on my part is what brought me to the conclusion I made this week: everything I experience with my mother has to be a fantasy. It can't be anything else except things in my head. She's dead. We can't actually interact, haven't been able to interact, meet, talk, touch, feel... for 37 years. We will never be able to do that, any of that. Everything with her is a fantasy.

All of this was fantasy.

And I am sad.

It was all in my head.

And I am alone.

I am a grown woman. I am experiencing this alone. There isn't anything else to do about it but be alone in it. I'm the only one who can be this: alive and without her. Grown up, older than her, continuing to live, without any shadow or trace or feeling or connection. She's gone, has been physically gone, since that day in my house when she said goodbye. I have not seen her since and will never see her again.

I'm sure I will continue to feel her- that part about no trace, no feeling, no connection- that's not true. It's just that all of those feelings, those connections, they really are fantasy. They may be here and they may be now, but they are not her- they are me.

She is not here. She is not now. She is gone, has been gone, this whole time.