Belonging

 My Mom died on this day in 2003.  As her caregiver, I felt very connected.  I was in the right place, fulfilling her needs and being of service with love.  But years before that I was quite a different person.  In the turbulent 60s, I was quite turbulent.  I had left home for work in Chicago.  With or without people I had a sense of loneliness, of not being OK.  I could not have identified those feelings back then.  I was not into feelings.  I was more into forgetting such discomfort.  From time to time, for brief times I could forget.  But someone had my back, and I was able to move from harming myself to helping others.  So I was able to be a caregiver to my parents.  That someone who had my back would periodically show up in my consciousness, inside me, or maybe around me, and I would know in those moments that things did not have to be the way they were in Chicago at that time.  That someone is a Presence.  Today, I try to keep in conscious contact with this Presence.  And such contact makes me feel OK about being me.  Beats oblivion!