Amazing Grace

 

Talking with my mother is harder now. Sometimes her responses to what I say don't make sense, as if we were having two completely different conversations. She seems to know this, and avoids the issue by simply listening. I walk her through the news about each family member and at the end she says "tell me more!" and I can't think of anymore to tell. But more often when I get there, she tells me she's frightened. Yesterday was one of those days. "I'm frightened, I'm frightened!" she said, clutching my arm. "What are you frightened of?" I ask. "I don't know, I don't know, I've forgotten" she says. 

We walk to her room and I settle her in her chair, then I sit on her walker and hold both her hands. I wonder what I can say to this unknown fear. 

Remember this, I say, and I slowly recite Psalm 23. You see, you are in the valley of the shadow of death right now,  but you don't have to fear anything bad, because the Shepherd is walking right ahead of you, keeping you safe. 

She says "it's so hard to believe that."

I nod, I know, it is very hard.

To fight off the fear, we sing. We sing the first verse of "All people that on earth do dwell" and "How great Thou Art". We always sing "Amazing Grace", which is her absolute favourite. Sometimes we sing a random song that pops into my head. Yesterday it was "this little light of mine" but often we sing "Anything you can do I can do better" which we sing so raucously that once a carer came running to make sure nothing was amiss.  Sometimes when we're singing hymns other residents wander in and sing with us before meandering out again. My mother and I are in entire agreement that none of them sings as well as we do. Sometimes we sing "If you're happy and you know it" but yesterday I sang, "If you're grumpy and you know it". 

"But I'm not grumpy!" she says. 

You so are! I say giggling. 

"You'll never go to heaven", she says sternly, "you laugh too much". 

Not at all, I say, I'll get to those pearly gates and St Peter will say "ah, Lisa Emerson! You were a great one for laughing, come right in". Of course, he'll take one look at you and say "Hmmm. Grumpy Jean. What ARE we going to do with you?"

She smacks my hand. "Child abuse!" I shriek.  

"Oh you!" she says. And then, "I'm so glad you're my daughter". 

I squeeze her hands. "And I'm so glad you're my mother", I say. 

"Really, truly? Even now?" 

Truly. Even now.  

It seems to me that I've spent the year thinking about what it means to be a mother, to be a daughter. 

A few months back, I went on a three-week pilgrimage in Italy, a pilgrimage in the footsteps of St Francis and St Clare. But Francis and Clare rarely appeared on my radar during those weeks - it was all about Mary. Everywhere I went, it seemed, there were paintings of Mary, paintings of all sizes across hundreds of years. 

 She was a grave girl with a book looking hesitantly into the eyes of an angel with gold spread wings. 

She was Everymother, looking down in wonder at her child. 

She was a stately queen, the Madonna, a woman gazing out into the world with clear, all-seeing eyes and calling it her own. Mary. I became quite obsessed. 

Perhaps part of my preoccupation can be attributed to the fact that, while I was in Italy, my eldest daughter was heavily pregnant, with a baby girl whom she planned to name Grace. Grace was to occupy a special place in our family: the first girl of this generation of our family - the eldest daughter, of an eldest daughter, of an eldest daughter, of an eldest daughter. My girl was due to give birth while I was in Assisi and it was hard to focus on 800 year old saints when my mind was on new life emerging at the other end of the world.  

 Our time in Assisi was carefully planned, but just a few days before my daughter was due, we had a half day to just wander around the town.  One of the leaders had mentioned this place where there was an art installation that was worth seeing. I looked it up: the chapel of Santa Maria Delle Rose. That was enough for me. I headed off with Google maps to guide me. 

The chapel from the outside looks like nothing special in a town filled with wonders. I stepped in and looked around.  

I was alone in the chapel. The space was full of light and, arranged in a circle, hung from a wood frame, were tubes, each containing small identical wooden statues of a woman. In front of this circle, was a tall, graceful carving of the same image in blue marble. A Madonna. 

  

A beautiful young Italian woman came quietly over to me and asked in lilting English if I would like her to explain the installation. Then she guided me over to the centre of the circle where, on a plinth, were hand-sized versions of this image in white marble. 

 "This installation is meant to be felt as well as looked at", she said. And she gently turned my hand over and placed the white marble Madonna into it. "This is the mother," she said. And to my utter astonishment I burst into tears. I mean, not gentle tears prettily brimming over the eyelids, but full-on messy sobs. 

The guide stepped back, stricken, her hands to her face. "I'm so so sorry!" she said. 

No, no, no, I stammered out between sobs. I scrambled for a possible explanation, something that might make sense to both of us.  It's just my mother, I said, in a dementia ward, and I'm so sad. And my daughter, about to have a baby and she is miles away from a hospital, and I'm so worried. I feel so helpless, so far away. And this, this, this.... 

I closed my other hand over the cool white statue, and held the mother of God in my hands while I tried to rein in my tears. 

Once my sobs were down to a manageable level, we continued the tour. There were 33 wooden Madonnas, one for each year of Jesus' life.  Each statue was carved in a different wood, all of which had been collected from all around the world. And the statues were beautifully carved so that, from different angles they conveyed the Madonna differently: "you see, here, if you hold it this way, the Annunciation; this way she is a pregnant Madonna; here she holds her child - and then, turn it this way, she is a dove, the dove of peace". The circle that held the Madonnas was held from a central point on the high ceiling, "You can see the A and the O. The Alpha and the Omega," murmured my guide, "The Beginning and the End". Yes, I could see. Perhaps that was why I was crying. 

 The next day, I woke up to the news from my son-in-law. Baby Grace had been born safely at home. And I remembered my mother sitting beside me in church, just a few days after my daughter had been born. I held my precious child wrapped in a white shawl on my lap and glanced at my mother whose eyes were filled with tears. "Is something wrong?" I whispered. "No, no, nothing is wrong," she said, "it's just...I am a mother of mothers" . 

 I am a mother of mothers. Grace is here.