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STEVEN IVORY: Always Something There to Remind Me
"I've got myself to remind me of love" --"Happy Feelin's," Frankie Beverly & Maze
The last time I spoke to my mother, I was saying bye.
She was sitting on the couch in our living room in seemingly good health, enjoying the company of her children as I headed out to attend a high school basketball game.
I next saw her in the wee hours of the following morning, in a bed at Oklahoma City's University Hospital. She was attached to a respirator--I can still hear its cold, urgent rhythm in my head--having suffered a cerebral hemorrhage shortly after I left for the game.
Though it was her body--the body through which five children had come--it was clear to me Mama had vacated it, taking with her everything that made her body a human being named Marjorie Turner Ivory.
It was November 28, 1971. I was fifteen years old.
I distinctly remember declaring to myself, "This day marks the end of my happiness forever. Never again can I smile or laugh. Nothing can happen in my life so good that I will ever lose this pain." I believed this.
Exactly how a child grasps with the sorrow accompanying the loss of a parent, I am unable to put into words. I simply know that somehow I did. It didn't seem that way then, but apparently everyday got easier. Today when life leaves me in doubt, I consider what that 15 year old child endured--and the fact that he came through it.
What I've discovered is that my past life experiences are as mighty a source of reassurance and inspiration as anything else I might call on. And those experiences needn't be as heavy as a death in the family. Every difficulty or hardship, no matter how formidable or minute, comes with its own lesson.
I know what I've gone through to get here. And when I am flustered, I remember that I've got MYSELF--the victories of one week ago, of a year ago--to remind me that I am anything but powerless.
There is might in the tender memory of an old mission accomplished; motivation in honoring past dreams come true, long neglected as insignificant in the shadow of current desires. Don't dismiss the accomplishment of the very first pound you shed in order to lose 20. Before you lost that pound, it seemed as high as the Wall of China.
The thing required to quit smoking is the same ingredient required to free yourself from a job you hate. The verve it takes to walk out of an abusive relationship is the same thing allowing you to pass the bar exam or conquer the world. That thing is an implacable faith in self and being ever mindful of the fact that whatever high ground you've managed to corral was indeed captured by...you. And you possess the capacity to do this over and again.
The triumph of the past, no matter how small it appears, is the clay that shapes the future. In my understanding of this I have also developed a certain respect for the hand I've been dealt. To think--someone looks longingly UP from his predicament TO what you consider your problems.
I also now realize there is far worse than losing a loving parent: having parents who don't care, who abuse; parents who cannot bring themselves to love at all.
"After losing my mother," as a young man I was fond of saying, "They can drop the bomb, and I'd absorb it and keep stepping." I now know it is not always the bomb, but its fallout --how a life event leaves one feeling about oneself--that can do you in.
I also discovered you are never too old to learn something from a child. Particularly the one inside you.
Steven Ivory's book, FOOL IN LOVE (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster) is in stores now or at Amazon.com (www.Amazon.com) Respond to him via STEVRIVORY@AOL.COM or MYfeedback@eurweb.com
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