Open Hands

Along this spiritual path, we are invited to live with “open hands”.  Hands that are open to receive life’s unfolding, to let go of what is no longer needed, to give into the bounty of life and receive it back in a new form. I have found it nearly impossible to live with open hands but not entirely. At some point in the struggle to accept what is happening, life itself wrenches my close palms open so that I might find a way through to the new life. 

When crossed into thresholds of loss, the first human reaction, instinctual, is to grip, to hold on more tightly to what is being lost, to try and salvage the old life.  How could we do otherwise?  What has kept us, loved us, restored us is slipping away and with it our sense of solidity, vitality, strength, protection. There is for me an experience of being thrown into a new and foreign land, the tools I used to plow my fields no longer work in this new place.  The brick I used to make my house doesn’t exist only reeds and grasses.  I do not know where to go for water, how to get out of the rain, what the weather patterns are.  All that I know is that the old ways of knowing, the people I relied on, my habits of mind have been stripped of their usefulness.  The rhythm of my day is no longer in synch with reality.  I will spend a long while stranded, searching for the old land before I am left broken enough to open my hands into accepting what has happened, to steer my steps to a new direction.  It comes as a grace, not something I want to do but like a bud coaxed open by a gently insistent sun, I open. 

In a recent picture of me with my mother we sit next to each other facing the camera.  Our hands with palms open face our bodies and are in line in way that looks like a river flowing.  Pinky sides down, my fingers flow into her wrist, like water tumbling. My hand looks more like hers now with its jutting bones, veins, and wrinkles.  I can accompany her only so far to the place she is heading, a crossing that she will need to make alone.  But not entirely, I feel around us those who cared for us but are now gone helping us along this way. 

My mother sometimes clenches her fingers into a fist something she never did before when her nails were long and polished.  Lately, they have become too brittle to grow so after a lifetime of manicured nails – something that gave her much pleasure  - they are one more thing she has had to give up.  Her nails so short and brittle now bleed around the edges and she clenches them to forget about them or just keep them hidden. But in this picture, her fingers and palm are outstretched as are mine pointing in the same direction together.  

In this journey with my mother, I too clench and open my palms.  Opening is never complete but follows the rhythm of the heart, opening and closing in a necessary pumping that brings life to the body.  In my opening and then closing, I have a chance to go at my own pace into the letting go, discerning what is needed in this new land and what is no longer necessary, where I should stand, where I should kneel.  

With my opening and closing palms, I take tiny steps towards acceptance of her frailty and aging, the grief for not being able to bring her back to the life she had and for the someday losing her.  Through this openness and grief, I feel the divine source leading me into a new tenderness, joy, and gratitude for my mother which I sense will keep us connected through and into her passing.