When Love Finally Lands: A 104-Year Journey Through Healing, Time, and Coming Home

Speaker Identification

Speaker 1 – Host, Jennifer Elizabeth Masters. The speaker identifies herself by name at the beginning of the program and narrates the complete episode.

Speaker 2 – Theme Vocal. Brief opening and closing lyric lines are presented as a separate prerecorded or produced vocal element. The performer is not identified in the transcript.

Speaker 2 – Theme Vocal: I don’t have to hide.

Speaker 1 – Host: Welcome, I'm Jennifer Elizabeth Masters and this is SOS for the Soul Coming Home. Today I want to tell you about a trip where almost everything that could go wrong, went wrong, a wrong rental car, a trunk that wouldn’t open, a woman at customer service who could not for the life of her tell me one simple thing, a lost wallet with all my credit cards and a cemetery I didn't mean to drive into. And then there's an embarrassing ending, so completely and utterly Jennifer that I didn't even notice it was happening until I was sitting in customs hours later and wondering how long it had been true.

So we'll get to that. This past weekend, I visited my mother who just turned 104 and this is the story about that trip because it's magical, it's hilarious, it's heartwarming. So I hope you'll stay with me to the end and whether you're listening live on BBS Radio or listening to the replay later, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for being here.

So going home to Canada, I took a red-eye from Los Angeles on Thursday night arriving in Toronto at just before seven o'clock, someone tried to smuggle a kitten on board the plane. So that indicated to me what kind of trip I was going to be having because even before we could take off on this trip, we had to return to the gate and we were there for almost an hour while they deplaned the cat and its owner. So it has to be a manifested animal, you have to have permission to have an animal on board and apparently this gentleman did not have that. So in between all of this, there was some humor, I certainly learned some things about my mother and also myself.

So under the flowers, the lights, the frustration, something happened that 39 years of this work had quietly prepared me for and I'd like to walk you through the whole thing exactly as it happened. And I don't want you to think this is about my mom who just turned 104, but here's what I want to say to you is that that in itself is something that not many people get to do. My mother turning 104 is a very big thing. We're all very proud of her, but it's about other things.

It's about healing. It is about how things do not get resolved in one version. Life is messy, right down to the last minute. So I'd like to name something before I get started.

You know, I've been talking about the mother wound for years. I talked about nervous system regulation. I've talked about reclaiming yourself. I have talked about how to receive love without abandoning yourself.

I've taught it and I believe every word of it. But this week I got to live it in real time with no script, no session, no client on the other end of the line, just me and my 104-year-old mom. And everything that happens when two people that have had a complicated relationship get to spend one more weekend together. And what I'd like you to notice is that this isn't just a story where I did all the changing and she stayed exactly the same.

She changed too. And genuinely at the end of her life where my brother said she'll never change Jennifer, stop hoping, stop wishing she actually did. She softened. She became more introspective, less critical, less confronting and less controlling than she'd ever been with me before.

So this weekend was really about two changes, meeting each other all over again at the same time. Hers, quiet and slow, built over years and mine, the work I've done to be able to receive her softening instead of needing to look at it in a certain way or needing it at all. And I'd like you to keep that in-yunr back pocket. We'll come back to that.

So here's how the weekend went. By the time we landed in Toronto, of course, we left an hour late, I had no sleep. I was up all night because the flight was so bumpy that even after being a flight attendant myself and having years and years of experience traveling, it was scary. It was the type of flight where you wondered if a wing was going to fall off any second.

So we landed safely in Toronto, then I had to go get my car. And so I don't know if you've rented a car at an airport recently, but there's somebody at the desk, but nobody where the cars are. So you're on your own. You have to go find your car.

They told me it was in, what do they say? aisle 10. So I go and get in the car at aisle 10. And I'm trying to start the car. It's one of those push buttons like my car and it wouldn't start.

Now it is unlike me to get out the instruction book, but I did. I got out the manual. I looked at it. I still couldn't figure out how to start the car.

So I go back to the desk. Can somebody tell me how to start this VW? And the guy walked out with me and he goes, oh, that's not your car. It's the one next to it.

And I was saddened because this was a bright blue VW SUV. So cute. And I had a Toyota Prius and not to diss the Toyota Prius, but you know, there have been lots of jokes told about the Prius in movies, et cetera, that my boys laughed and we all laughed about. So getting into the Prius, the stick shift was something I argued with the entire weekend.

It wasn't intuitive like me. It was very convoluted and I had to, you know, have a stick shift. You have to go kind of to the left and down. Well, it was that way instead of being an easy up into reverse or straight back and it was none of that.

You had to shift it over and up. And so I struggled with that the entire weekend. So I eventually got the car going and although I had to start it a few times because it didn't sound like the motor was running. So I drove, this is interesting, I drove and had breakfast with an old boyfriend of mine from way back when I was a flight attendant.

And he was going to make breakfast for me and then I was going to go on to see my brother. So I'm just five minutes away from his house. And knowing Bill like I do, I called in advance and said, hey Bill, just want to make sure you know that you're awake and you got your pants on. And he said, yeah, I got my pants on.

So I pulled in, got into his garage and took, I didn't take his elevator, but I walked up the stairs and there he was in his Joe Boxer shorts. I said, Bill, you said, you had your pants on. He goes, I do. Anyway, that was the beginning of my weekend in Toronto.

And he made a nice breakfast, another friend joined us and then I was on my way to go see my brother. I picked up a couple bottles of wine at the LCBO, that is the liquor board of Canada because you go to a liquor store to buy wine. So I was taught by my mom, you don't ever show up somewhere empty handed. So I brought two bottles of white wine, which I knew she liked and then stopped at the drug store for some tweezers that my mother requested.

And so my birthday present for my mother was some tweezers. So stopped off at my brother’s. I had a cup of coffee with him and his wife. We sat and talked a little bit.

He told me that the mayor was coming to see mom at three o'clock. So we had some time to kill. We enjoyed just being together. Tim is my oldest brother.

Tell you a little bit about Tim. Tim rescued me. He was my favorite brother, 10 years older than me. And he means a lot to me.

So when he did rescue me, he went to my parents to tell them what had happened and they did not believe him. They called him a liar. And so as a result, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about this because if you do not process feelings, what happens is you will eat your feelings. He's a great baker.

He's a great cook. And he would bake bread and bake brownies and cake. And of course, enjoy them as well. And so he got to be quite large.

Love him to pieces. But I do worry about his health. He was in the hospital over Christmas with congestive heart failure. So he's back on the mend and drove me to see my mom.

And when we got there, you know, the shadow of what his experience was with my mom cast a little, I would say, dark energy over my visit with my mom. We had a cup of tea with mom and found the mayor had already been there. So we were, we were told, we weren't sure if our other brothers sabotaged. The little photo off with the mayor or not, but we just let that go.

So mom at 104 amazing woman, she's able, you know, to hold herself upright. She uses a walker to walk, but she had her bed very, very low to the ground and reminds me of the Carol Burnett show where you know, you have to kind of get some momentum behind yourself to get yourself off off that rocking chair. Well, she had to do that to get herself off the bed. And when I tried to help her, she would say, Don’t hover.

Don’t. my mother still very fiercely independent, even at 104. So, you know, 104. That's a whole century, a century of losing family members, raising a family of becoming. So a little backstory before I continue, I'm going to back up a little bit because this is important.

And I mentioned this briefly in my June episode, because it sits underneath everything that happened afterward. My mother, I've got to say, she's a beautiful woman. And I have a lot to be grateful for because I'm very much like her. I look like her.

My physical appearance is very similar to her. We have the same shape and her clothes fit me perfectly. This is one of my mother's dresses, you know, at this age she dressed like Jacqueline Kennedy, Jacqueline Onassis. This is beautifully dressed, would get her hair done every week.

And so she always looked nice. You would not see her wearing sweatpants ever. Always nicely dressed. So about three years ago, my mother had a bad fall and I went up to Canada to see her.

And this fall, we really were surprised, you know, that didn't take her out because she really injured the back of her head and ended up going into a, would you say, a spontaneous episode of dementia because of whatever happened to her head. And so during that visit that I discovered that her beautiful mink coat that was promised to me was given to my niece Adrienne. Now, would I ever wear a mink coat? I can't imagine wearing pelt of another living thing.

Would I ever have the occasion to wear a mink coat? That was not the point. But the point was I knew that this was precious to my mom and the fact that she gave it away when it had been promised to me, I was really hurt about it. And at the time when I discovered the mink coat was gone, I told her.

I said, I feel like you love Adrienne more than you love me. And I carried that wound for the last three years. And what my mother's been doing for the last three years has been trying to help me understand that that's not the case, that she doesn't love Adrienne more than me. So that belief, and this is how do we spin things, right?

We hear something or we see something and somebody does something and then we put our spin on it. And that's the kind of wound that settles in-yunr heart and it quietly shapes how you see everything else. So that's the backstory on the mink. And so we're going to come full circle with this weekend.

It's really quite interesting how things took place. So yeah, so my mom on every conversation that I had with her would tell me on the phone, tell me when she saw me, I love you, Jennifer, I really love you. Now here's the thing, if you've been wounded deeply, someone could tell you that. But if you don't trust what that person is saying to you, you may not believe it.

So I'm just, I'm just going to leave it there because it could be that you've experienced something like this. So I think it matters a lot for us to understand who my mother was. She was not an easy woman to live with. If you watched my other episodes, you've heard some of the stories.

Our home was more like, I say it jokingly, it was more like a prisoner of war camp. My mom was critical, controlling, competitive, even jealous of me. And I will tell you this, every Saturday, every Sunday, it was everybody up. It's eight o'clock, everybody up, up, up.

And it was that way from the time I was little to the time I left the household that we could not sleep in, not for a moment, eight o'clock. We were all out of bed. So for the longest time, I didn't think my mom could see me as someone separate from her. And it was less about accepting who I actually was, and more about mom needing me to reflect who she was.

And that's real. I'm not going to pretend it isn't part of the story because it is. But what I will say is that she's softened considerably at the end of her life, and convincing me that she actually loves me seem to have become her purpose. Her reason may be for still being here in some way.

So three years of trying to close a wound, she opened without fully meaning to. And I'm telling you this now because that piece will make sense later on. So I wanted to bring flowers to my mom on Friday, but Tim, my retired policeman, is very, very matter of fact, it's like we're doing this and we're going to go there and as fast as we can do things with as much order and as little deviation as possible. So I wasn't able to stop and get flowers on the way to see my mom Friday.

So Saturday, after spending a lovely night, I did sleep well with the three hour time change. I was up 5.30 in the morning and went through bags of my mother's beautiful clothes. And like I said, my mother, gorgeous wardrobe, holy cow, dresses, designer dresses, beautiful suits of all different colors. So I went through things because my mom's pants were falling off her.

So I found some things for her to be able to wear that wouldn't fall off her. She's lost so much weight. So on the way, and I was on my way up to visit my mom, I stopped at Lady Di Florist in Alliston on the way. And I asked for something custom.

I picked out the flowers and the vase myself and chatted with Zoe, the young lady making the arrangement for me and took a little longer than I'd hoped and I was feeling a little anxious. And I understand why now knowing, knowing what I know. So when I arrived with the flowers, mom was walking into the dining room and everybody was seated already in the dining room. And the first words out of her mouth, if you've heard me say this once, I think I said it a hundred times, you're late in that tone.

I said, I'm sorry, mom, I was getting you flowers, but the flowers mattered not. There was a gentleman standing there next to her. He did not belong there. He was visiting and he said, let me take the flowers from you so you could help your mom with her pants.

So I gave the flowers to this gentleman and I helped my mom with her trousers and helped her to the table. So I got her seated at the table in the dining room. I couldn't sit with her because there were four people seated at that table. There was no space for me at the time and mom introduced me as her.

Only as daughter, this is my lovely daughter, Jennifer. So I met everyone and several times. There is Olga to my mother's right. There was Sue across the table from my mom and Elsie to my mother's left.

And so they had all heard about me coming. I seated mom at the table, pushed in her chair and I left and took the flowers up to her room. So I went back to the car. I got the clothes that I brought her.

I organized her closet. Things had been put in kind of a convoluted fashion. So I ordered her blouses, her pants and coats to the sides. Tidy to her, her dresser.

And then I went back down to get my mom. I sat with her for a little bit for her lunch and she introduced me to everyone again. And I apologized for being late. I'm missing a portion here.

Now if any of you have people that are near the exit door, let's say, close to leaving the planet. This is something that I was not aware of. And I called a friend before I went to visit to sit down with my mom at the table. Now Shelly is a death doula.

She has this beautiful gift of helping people leave the planet. I explained to Shelly what had happened. And she asked me, why were you late? I have to say, I said to Shelly, well, honestly Shelly, I thought she would forget.

Now you would think a woman at 104 would clearly have dementia. My mother remembered. So she may have lapses here and there, but mostly, mostly, she's present. So but Shelly explained to me, having dealt with a lot of people that are processing, passing over.

She said, the flowers weren't so important to her. She said, when people are close to leaving this earth, time matters more than anything because they have so little of it. And I'm going to give you an analogy here. So think of it as when you're a child, when we're small and we want to grow up.

I remember I wanted to be a teenager. I couldn't wait to be a teenager and it took so long to get there. And of course, after hitting 65, we seem to be on a roll. The time passes faster and faster and faster and faster.

Well, when you get to the very end of your life, which my mother is at, I mean, I'm less just going to live to the 110, time is short and it matters more. And so Shelly helped me see how imperative it is to be on time for somebody who is at the end of their life. And so the rest of the weekend, I made it a point. If I said I was going to be somewhere, I was there at the appointed time.

So I have not stopped thinking about this. It's a poignant teaching that time matters more to us, the older we become and the closer we are to leaving the planet. So that's why this lateness landed so hard. It really wasn't about the flowers.

It was about an hour plus with me that my mom felt she could not get back. And so I told her the truth. I've been going through a huge bag of clothes that Tim had insisted I sort through, deciding what fit me, deciding what, you know, mom needed, you know, and there was so much to go through. I had tons and three closets full of clothes.

And I'm talking about new clothes, clothes, still a tags on them, not clothes that she's had for a million years that need to go to good will. Now a beautiful, beautiful clothes. So what I noticed about this weekend was something very different. Some moments my mom was completely present, sharp and all there.

And there were other moments where she had lapses. I've seen this before with people with dementia. It's like a rotating door in the brain. Sometimes they're right there with you and sometimes they're not.

But mostly my mother was there. And I will say there's a few times she said some things that caught me off guard. Like, you know, her apartment that she was in where she was living independently up until March of this year. Yes, at 103 and three quarters, she was still still living independently.

And she said, who has my furniture? Where's my furniture? I don't know where I'm going back to. And I did respond.

But she's clearly grieving about this, you know, being in this new place without the familiar things around her. The room that she is in is kind of like, it's like a nun's cell. You know, it's just very austere, not what my mother is used to. So I didn't argue.

I let my mother feel what she felt. I told her I'll be more careful to be on time. So that was the start of Saturday, the day almost everything went sideways. So after lunch, I talked to mom about what I had done, showed her the closet.

She was happy with that. I wrote her the clothes I brought, but she clearly did not have enough slacks that won't end up being around her ankle. So I said to her, hey, mom, do you want to blow this pop stand? Do you want to escape from this place?

Do you want to go for a drive? Let's go thrift shopping. Now this is something that my mom and I have done hundreds of times. When I was a little girl, my mother used to take me to the Hadassa bazaar.

I would say a Jewish community organized, huge, huge, what would you call it? Like a thrift, like a thrift in a church basement, but it was in this huge place where the Canadian exhibition is held. It's huge. And so my mother and I used to go when I was a little girl.

So mom was excited to be going out. So out the door we went, I had told a couple of nurses, I'm taking my mom out. Is it okay? They said, yes.

And so off we went. I got her to the car. It was hot outside and I attempted to turn the Prius on. It's hard to tell when it's on.

I was very concerned about keeping her cool while I got her walker into the car. And so I'm looking for the push button to open the trunk. I look on the dash, I'm looking for a button, there's no button. I look down beside the driver's side seat to see if there's maybe a latch to pull up.

There's no latch to pull up. Now, I'm not one who tends to read instructions or directions. So when I tell you this, this is a big deal for me. I open the glove compartment and I pulled out the manual and I'm, mom is sitting in a car.

All car is hot. It's over 80 degrees. We're sitting in the hot sun. I'm concerned about her well-being.

I'm flipping through the manual. Look at trunk, open trunk. Look under, oh, nothing. Look under trunk, nothing in the manual.

I go to the table of contents. I quickly glance through, nothing. So I pulled out my budget rental car contract. I called the number on the contract.

I got customer service. I know, boy, this sounds like a Saturday night live skit. What's your name? What's your date of birth?

Where did you rent your car from? What's the car, the contract number? I said, all I want is to know how to open the Prius trunk. And she keeps asking me questions.

When we get to question number 15, I'm in hysterics. I'm practically, I guess I was, screaming at this woman, how do I open the trunk of the Toyota Prius? Just tell me. And I'm loud at this point.

Please tell me, how do I open the trunk? And because I raised my voice. I heard this woman across the parking lot say, do you need some help? I said, yes, please, yes.

How do I open this trunk? And she walked up and goes, I'd already checked. I didn't see it. I didn't find the little button to pop the trunk.

All that time, all that. When you expect to find something in a certain place and it's not there and you keep, well, where should it be? I'm not my car. There's a button on my dash.

My Ford pickup trucks that I've had, there is a push button or a lever, easy peasy to open the trunk. Not this Toyota Prius. Anyway, the woman helped me get the walker in the trunk. And her husband and she heard that I said she was 104.

And they said, oh, we heard somebody turn 104. And so they walked over and congratulated my mom. And my mother was very non-plussed about the whole thing. It's like it's every day it turned 104.

So anyway, we said goodbye. And thanks those people. Of course I have hung up with this budget rental person. Of course she hung up on me.

But I was so concerned. You know, older people can easily die from heat stroke. And I was worried about my mom. It was hot.

I was scared about my mom. I've thought about this a lot since. The woman on the phone was not a villain. She was doing her job following the process.

But what made the moment so hard was standing where it happened. I was exhausted. I hadn't slept, you know, all night long, Thursday night, coming in Friday. I was tired.

I was frightened for my mom. So first time I had taken her out with quite some time. So I get in the car. And as I'm trying to put the car in reverse, my mother sat there.

She'd been watching this son fold. And although she's hard of hearing, she could hear me yelling. And stressed. She said, I had no idea.

I was so much trouble. Oh, my goodness. Hearing those words almost made me cry on the spot. I put my hand on her hand.

And I said, mom. Mom. This wasn't you at all. This wasn't you.

I wasn't upset with you. I was upset with you. I was upset with you. I was upset with you.

I wasn't upset with you. I was upset that I couldn't open the trunk. I was upset that the car was too hot for you. I was upset that you could have heat stroke.

But isn't that what we do? Someone has a bad day. And we think they're upset because of me. Someone sighs.

And we think, what have I done wrong? Someone is struggling. And we think, I'm too much. I'm the problem.

I looked at my mom and I said, mom, you're not the problem. And I want to tell you in the years I've spent doing this work, sitting across from women who believe in their bones, they're too much too difficult. Exhausting the problem because they've been told they are. I don't think I've ever understood that belief as clearly as I did.

Sitting in that Toyota Prius in the parking lot, watching it live with my. 104-year-old mother. So I want to say something else that connects back to the Mink coat. You know, three years ago, I know exactly how. I would have reacted to weekend like this being late, the trunk, all of it.

I would have carried it defensively. I might have needed to see how hard I was working needed something back from her that she wasn't able to give me that moment because I still underneath that. The daughter believed. That my mother didn't love me.

This time, none of that need was there. And that's the difference that healing makes. It's not that the situations get easier. It's that you stop needing the other person to become someone else in order for you to be okay.

I'm going to say that again. You stop needing the other person to become someone else in order for you to be okay. So with that, we drove to the thrift store like we've done hundreds of times before. My mother loves thrift shopping and we get the walker out of the trunk and walk up to the porch.

And I see for the first time. Stairs that my mother has to navigate. She did fine. And there was a lady, a young woman outside.

She helped us help guide my mother in, hold the door as I help get her walker in and my mom in. And she helped my mother shop. She was showing my mom tops in the store. How about this?

How about that? And when the owner of the shop heard my mother was 104, she asked her. I have a little interview about this. So what's your secret for getting to be 104?

My mother shared that. So mother made a few purchases. She found some pants that would fit her and we got in the car. And she asked my mother to Sunday morning, June.

So she goes home, I have taken my car trash. Because it's 25 hours a save and a ray of'? It's bought with my mother. That was like $20.

And the owner decided it would be photoshooted out for her to the Dairy Queen, at the end of town, was just a couple blocks away. I'd been there several times with my kids over the years, but I don't think ever with my mom. I ordered one medium cone for myself. My mother pulled a purple Canadian ten-dollar bill from her purse and handed it to me.

I gave it to the attendant, who returned a dime in change. I passed my mother her cone, and she thanked me. I got some extra napkins. Pulled the car over to a shady spot so we could sit and enjoy it.

My mother got quiet, eating her ice cream. I took some pictures of her. eating that ice cream cone, enjoying every bit of it. My mother eats like a bird, so seeing her enjoy that cone was wonderful. Not a single drip landed on her clothes.

I looked at her and said, how are you feeling? And she looked up at me and she said, happy. Just that one word. Later sitting there she mentioned that neither of my two older brothers ever once suggested breaking her out of that place.

She enjoyed our outing quietly, thoughtfully. And when we got back to Riverwood, the senior center, we were greeted at the door by a very tall woman, all in blue, who was looming over us. Practically flew across the floor without her feet touching. Where have you been?

We've been looking all over for you. I apologize to the nurse and explain. I asked two different nurses if I could take my mother out. They did both that said yes.

Nobody told me I needed to formally sign her out. And somewhere in the shift change, the message never was passed along. So I thank the nurse for caring and her concern because elderly people can wander off, get lost and bewildered. I appreciated the systems and checks.

And I have a suspicion that my mother was secretly pleased that she had gotten to have a clandestine little outing with her maverick daughter. It had been a quiet little adventure in the Prius—to the thrift store and Dairy Queen. So on my way home, as I was leaving Riverwood, my mother's senior home, I heard something quiet, not dramatic, just the quietest thought, find a park. And as an intuitive, I get messages like this all the time.

God, angels, my guides, myself, speaking to me. And when your mind is as quiet as mine, because I don't have mind chatter anymore, and I can teach you how to get to that place, you hear the voice in-yunr head. Now, I've been to doctors and told them I hear voices in my head. They wanted to medicate me.

It's not that kind of, it's not schizophrenic guidance. So we all have it. So I started to drive around and look for a park. And it took me a little bit and I went past this large cemetery and went up and back and turned around and oh my goodness, the cemetery called to me, it beckoned for me to come through.

There are long sandy lanes, the gravel lanes, I guess. So I drove in and as I'm driving through the cemetery, no, cemeteries don't scare me. I've cleared spirits, I've cleared energy attached to people. And I've sat with things that most people find frightening.

I’m not afraid of ghosts. And that's not what this was. What I felt driving through this cemetery, through those rows and rows and rows and rows of monuments, beautiful monuments. There was something I'd never felt before.

And even having been in many cemeteries in my life where my father was buried, my grandparents, the same cemetery, there was this visceral pull and awe at the sheer volume of monuments, stones, some elaborate some plain, so many of them. And as I'm driving through looking at them all, it dawned on me, each one of those represented a person, a whole life, someone who laughed, someone who cried, someone who had a husband, children, daughters, somebody's mother, some of them loved deeply, surrounded by people right to the end, some of them I imagine were lonely, some who woke up every day, absolutely certain they had more time. Life is so short, and we all die every single one of us, no exceptions, and I've come to believe that how we choose to live life changes how we feel about death.

I live life to the fullest, I love my life. I'm not afraid of dying, I'm not afraid of death, I'm not ready to go, but I'm not afraid of the day that I do whenever that may be. So my mother said something this weekend. She's not a complainer.

And I interviewed her multiple times, and one of the things she said, life is wonderful, life is wonderful. So driving through and viewing all those stones made something very clear to me, we spend so much time trying to be right, trying to be understood, trying to prove our worth to someone, trying to get an apology that we think we're owed, trying so hard to change the people who hurt us. And I'll tell you this, my mother said, the biggest thing that she's learned is that everybody's different, and you can't change anyone. And just because you disagree with someone does not mean that they're wrong.

So as I was driving through that cemetery, I picked up my phone ready to take a video, and my phone was dead. Interesting, right? I found my way after to a park. I could not scroll on the phone because my phone was dead.

Interesting, right? I found myself a bench. I sat down as my message told me to do surrounded by these magnificent deciduous trees, leafy and green. And I've got to say, trees witness these generations before us.

They stand through every storm that comes. They lose their leaves every single fall and every spring without fail. They begin again. As I sat there looking at their leaves, I breathed, I exhaled, and that's all it took.

The tears began to flow. Someone far greater than me knew what I needed, knew that I needed to emote, to allow the tears to flow. And I did. It wasn't about a thing.

It wasn't about a thought. It wasn't about something missing or wrong. I just cried. Life is short, and it's beautiful if we can be present at every moment we appreciated so much.

And I think a lot of you listening have had the same experience or similar crying can come without a clear reason, and it's okay. I don't think my mother and I became perfect this weekend. I don't think our whole complicated history disappeared in one trip. It's been leaving layer by layer.

And I think something quieter and more beautiful happened instead. Both of us stopped keeping score, and we just enjoyed being with one another. We just loved each other. Sunday looked different than Saturday.

It was quieter, slower. I was on time. I helped my mother shower. I was there for breakfast.

It was the first time I'd ever seen my mother naked. My mother is a very very, you know, puritanical. You could say that, but more than that, very private person. And before I had to run back to her room to get something that we forgot, when I stepped back into the shower with the nurse, she had doused my mother's beautifully coiffed hair with water.

And my mother was moaning. She had nearly drowned, hated having water put on her face like that. I didn't have an opportunity to tell the nurse, but here's the thing. I know my mother well.

And when you spend a lifetime getting to know someone, you know what floats their boat, you know what destroys them. So I explained to Alana, please don't put water on my mother's face or head like that again. She prefers to keep her head dry and above water. And you know, if that isn't a metaphor for my mother's life, I don't know what is.

So while my mother was at lunch, I moved the phone that should have been put next to her bed. She had had a terrible fall before I got there. She's bruised all up and down her left arm and her shoulder and even on her back. She had raced to get to the phone and fallen on the bed rails.

The phone had been placed across the room. I could not understand how anyone could install a telephone in a senior living facility so far from the resident’s bed. Thoughtless, I think, is the word. So moving the phone was probably something that mattered more than almost anything I did the entire weekend.

Because I think it matters. It's not the same as rescuing someone. Rescuing usually comes from a place of believing someone can't cope or they need to be fixed for your own sake. What I was doing all weekend was different.

It was advocacy. It comes from recognizing someone's dignity and helping remove the barriers that are in the way. When I asked my mother, did she want to go for a drive? She shook her head.

She said, I'm fine staying in. It's just nice to be here with you. So my mom set her own limits that morning and I didn't need to drive her in order for the morning to feel good. One of the phrases I heard my mother repeat and this is very new.

Jennifer, if you see something you want, take it. Now I will tell you, my mother has coveted things that I have worn. I've seen her look at somebody and go, oh, I want that. She did that to my brother's teacher who was visiting at her cottage and he pulled off his sweater and threw it at her.

My mother has said that to me. I want that. A blouse that I loved. I took it off and gave it to her and then I resented the fact that I did.

Well, that was one of the things I picked up. When I picked up that blouse and then started going through the vast piles of her clothes, that one blouse seemed so insignificant in the scheme of everything. So three years after her trying to convince me that she loved me, here she was giving to me freely without me asking, without a single lens of competition in it, piece after piece of what belonged to her, her white leather jacket, her beautiful seven- or eight-hundred-dollar suits, gorgeous suits. I don't know where she thought she was going to wear them.

So I told my mom, everything you've given to me is precious to me. Every time I wear your clothes, I will stop and think of you with love. She said back to me, so simply, that was my hope. And I have to tell you that exchange was never about the clothes.

It wasn't about the mink. It was about two women after a lifetime of complexity between them, finally needing each other in a place where love could be spoken, given and received and believed. And then right before I left, I want to tell you about the moment that undid me the most. My mother was lying down in her bed as I was leaving.

She turned her head away from me, closed her eyes as if drifting off to sleep right there. So quietly, I almost missed it. She said, I wish you could see into my heart and what is there. I love you so much.

I sat with that for a very long time. And here's what I want you to understand about this sentence, that 39 years of doing this work and three years at the mink coat cracked open something in me. Forgiveness doesn't rewrite history. It doesn't mean the past didn't happen or it didn't hurt.

Or that there's nothing to grieve. My mother was not an easy woman to love. She was critical, controlling, competitive. All of that is still true, but she lived 104 and somewhere in those years, she started reflecting differently, really differently.

I watched a woman who once needed me to be an extension of her, loving me exactly as I am, but it didn't happen overnight. So the two suitcases filled with my mother's beautiful clothes are now unpacking in my closet. I am able to wear her clothes and be grateful for what she has given to me. It's all about how we receive the lessons and how we learn.

And when I ask mom, what is the biggest thing that you remark about on your life? She said, learning. So love can be challenging. Love can be easy.

But what I will tell you is, the long and the short of it is, it's love. Accept those that love you as they are. We can't change them. All we can do is accept them.

Love yourself fearlessly. And I hope that you will check out my new app, Unbecoming Holy Cow. The next show is going to be all about this app. I hope you'll check it out.

It is unbecoming.JenniferElizabethMasters.com. And this is how I can reach you at 3am in the morning so that if you have lost a mink coat along the way, metaphorically speaking, my app can help you. So thank you so much for being here. If you would like to find out more about me, my work, my books, JenniferElizabethMasters.com and my books are available on Amazon.

Remember, you are loved exactly as you are. Come home to yourself.

Speaker 2 – Theme Vocal: I don’t have to disappear. I don’t have to leave.