"The greatest regret is love unexpressed".
Sitting on a meditation mat, I recently had one of those life-changing experiences. I'm not a regular at contemplative ventures, but I attended a two day retreat that involved hours of sitting and walking in silence in a peaceful environment, attending to my breath, and inviting thoughts to pass through my brain like clouds passing across the sun.
Sitting for hours is not easy. Sometimes it's peaceful, sometimes a relief, and sometimes bloody unpleasant. By Saturday night I had had it. I felt rested and ready to go home. Sunday morning there was a 'dharma' talk from the leader, what the Buddhists call a talk about truth. A story was told about forgiveness and it goes something like this: Amongst a group of indigenous peoples', when a murderer is caught, the family of the victim gets a choice about forgiveness vs. retribution. The murderer is thrown into deep water that would drown him, and the family can choose to save him or not. If they do not choose forgiveness and a rescue, they will live with their sorrow forever. If they choose forgiveness, they will heal from their grief.
I'm not sure I heard the whole story, or heard it correctly and I regret that I cannot remember the specific indigenous group that the story was about. And I'm fuzzy on exactly what followed, but sometime that morning, sitting on my mat, I felt the internal platelets shifting within me, and a powerful surge of gratitude and love for my mother swelled in my gut.
My mother is a force, a Margaret Mead kind of presence who has attracted people who adore her. As a mother, however, she was not always easy. She was born into a poor family, lost her mom to a back ally abortion when she was only nine, and was left her to a mean father and five older siblings. Against the odds she found her way to become productive, generous and creative. Most of my life, however, I have had chapters of great resentments and struggle with her. Yet sitting on that mat, I truly got the meaning of the words "she did the best she could. Given the givens, my mother loved me as best she could. She gave as much as she could, and she mothered as lovingly as she could. That her mothering left me, her child, with holes to fill in my soul, is my journey, She did the best she could.
We are imperfect, us human beings. Most of us are wounded, hungry for what we didn't get and live imperfect lives. We muddle through. We love to the max of our ability, even when that is limited. In my life, my inheritance is rich with many privileges and resources, and yet it comes with a struggle to feel fully loved, and to love fully. That is my challenge. Not my mother's "fault."
I wise mentor of mine, Angeles Arien, said, "The greatest regret is love unexpressed." So when I returned from the retreat I wrote a kind of love letter to my 85 year old mother who needed it read to her since her eyes have given out. My heart is lighter for it, and I know it soothed her soul.