A Love Letter to my Mother

By Amy Phillips

In 2019 I wrote a blog post a week for a year. Part of what prompted this initiative was a desire to stay accountable to myself and my dreams. I wanted to see if it was true that “people behaved better when they’re being watched.”

At the time I imagined my writing to be focused largely around harnessing our individual and collective genius and creating “Community to Live and Die In” - a project that has remained steadfast in my heart and mind for as long as I can remember. It soon became clear that there were young parts of me that longed to be heard, to be seen, and to be integrated.

With the help of my writing mentor and friend, the one and only Pat Dobie, my weekly blogs soon became my “Year of the Child.” It was only in retrospect that I realized it was the sharing of my stories that really made the difference — a way to honour my inner little ones, along with all their triumphs and their sorrows.

I’ll share other blogs in the coming weeks and months, with additions and updates on what I’ve learned since then. I’ll also use this for my own more heart-based writing about the inner work I find so compelling.

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On this Mother’s Day I feel drawn to share a piece I wrote for my mother during that year. The lilacs she loved — and that her mother loved before her — are wafting their fragrance through my room as I write this. It wasn’t a slam-dunk being my mother’s daughter but I am oh so grateful to her — and to you, dear reader. What an amazing time to be living here on Mother Earth!

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Our mother, Cecile Albertine Phillips (née Vanden Wouwer) took her final breath on July 29th, 1985. She was sixty-five years old. Mum had undergone elective surgery the previous week. The procedure to remove arterial blockages was deemed more complicated than initially expected, but still successful. She was due to be released in the next couple of days.

It was all over before we knew it. Nancy was with her. I’d had a chance to say a quick hello and goodbye when we arrived at the hospital, but was on the phone trying to track down our brother, Marc, when the nurse came to say that my sister needed me.

Her death was shocking beyond belief, and the end of a beautiful era. For the previous few years we’d revelled in having Mum close by, holding court in her funky little basement suite fondly known as “Cec’s on Sixth”. We gathered regularly for feasts she whomped up with seemingly minimal effort (dinners for a dozen weren’t unusual), either at her place or the beach when the weather was fine. She used the coconut telegraph delivery system — “Dinner at the beach tonight dear, can you tell the others?” The bounty didn’t end there though. “I’ve made a big pot of …, would you like to take some home for your supper?” There is no question that one of the ways Mum showed us her love was with food.

We grieved her death in Bamfield. Marc was already there with his sailboat and the rest of us joined him as soon as we could. Uncle Johnny still lived on the property their father had homesteaded so that was home base. The house was too tiny though, so we built a makeshift kitchen on the dock.

Those first days are hazy. We spent one night in the exquisite beauty of the Broken Group Islands—a time out of time where we ate, drank, swam, cried, laughed and shared stories around a bonfire that lit the night sky. My emotions were all over the map, one moment full of glorious aliveness and the next in heart-clenching despair. Sarah, my then-eight year old step daughter, was a steady loving presence never far from my side.

We held a service for Mum in the United Church that Dad helped build in the 60s. We weren’t religious; it just seemed the natural thing to do. I brought her ashes in a basket with a small flask of brandy tucked in for good measure. The church was packed. I don’t know who chose the hymns (or how we came to have them) but as we sang Onward Christian Soldiers I got a fierce pain in my throat.

End of life celebrations are often illuminating because we find things out about people that we didn’t know before. That afternoon I learned from an old family friend that Mum had a longstanding dream of riding a bicycle to Mexico! I hadn’t thought of her as a seeker of adventure before, but her nickname, Cec (as in Auntie Cec, Grandma Cec, God Damn It, Cec!, etc.) was pronounced seek.

Certainly my inner seeking began in earnest at the time of Mum’s death. I was deeply fortunate to have had a session a few weeks earlier with a woman that Nancy recommended. I cried for three straight hours and I think this clearing is what allowed me to receive Mum’s final gift—a heart blown open to the whole range of emotions that only this kind of cataclysmic event can achieve.

I took this open heartedness and broken heartedness to bed while the penicillin worked its magic on what turned out to be a strep throat and tonsillitis combo that had come on so suddenly in the church. Gently cradled in the same flannel sheets that Mum had slept in the last time she’d visited her brother Johnny, I revelled in her closeness and relived the myriad synchronicities that had transpired since her death. There was no mistaking Mum’s hand in everything.

In addition to sharing Mum’s love of feeding people (a trait common to all her children) I am also starting to feel the stirrings of her adventurous spirit. For this and everything else you’ve given me, thank you Mum! I love you.

What traits have you inherited from your Mother? Let me know, I’d love to hear!