Tarot Thirteen

On my birthday I drew Death, the Thirteenth Tarot Card. At first I sucked in my breath and wanted to quickly shove it back into the pile. Twenty six years ago, on my father's birthday, which coincided with Winter Solstice, I had a Tarot reading done with the Death Card appearing on the top. A week later my father fell from a rickety ladder as he was sweeping the leaves from the roof of our childhood home and died. Thus, my reticence. What my heart told me then and now is that this death card does not predict imminent physical death, though I know my death is out there, but spiritual, emotional, even mental transformation.

Just before picking the death card, I glanced at the bottom of the newly shuffled deck and there was the Wind Mother Card. So when the death card was revealed, my first thought went to the death of the mother. My Aquarius mother died last July and I have since found myself obsessed with the aging and dying process. As the oldest sibling with both parents gone, I am theoretically the next in line to walk the plank. I have been reflecting all year on my own death, so drawing the death card seems a natural outcome of these thoughts. I have gone through periods of extreme anxiety, afraid to close my eyes as I attempt to fall asleep and have often felt overwhelmed by the shortness of my life and the need to leave behind a positive legacy.

There is also the death of myself as a mother. My daughter will be twenty-two tomorrow and I must be a slow learner: as much as I continually let her go as she grew up, her final flight to independence has given me pause as I grieve the loss of the mothering phase and question my childless future. I gave more than I ever thought possible to motherhood and truly loved this role. It has been three years since the “empty nest” began and though I am more grounded in my new life, I still weep on the way home from visiting my daughter.

This umbilical cord connecting mothers and daughters must be strong. It stretches over miles and miles. I never felt close to my mother, but her final years brought out my love for her. I found that, as she lay dying, all I wanted was to be with her, in any way possible, so she wouldn't have to be alone. For months after her death, I didn't feel she was gone at all. I still sometimes sense her presence. Each sunrise and sunset brings the balance of living and dying. More than ever before, I know I have but this one last part of my life to truly be present.

As I watch myself wasting time on trivial worries and banal anger, I wonder if the dramas, the misunderstandings, the churning, anxious, self-generated emotions even matter. The death card reminds me that nothing matters. The death card tells me to get over myself, to bury the maiden and the mother and to embrace the crone. My mother never embraced her aging, rather little by little she let it squeeze her into an unhappy hole of complaint and negativity. How do I not repeat her path? This summer, the exuberance of the sixties has gradually taken over my fears. I close my eyes with gratitude for each day: each conversation, each book, each meal. I treasure and try to understand each emotion, each thought, each moment of awe. I have cherished being physically alive by hiking, biking, and kayaking. My garden has been my tranquil, bountiful place, and I have soaked in the daily lessons plants, trees and other growing things have offered me.

“Death is always on one's shoulder,” writes Carlos Castaneda in The Teachings of Don Juan. This past year has been intense. Though scared, I have sat with death; though foolish, I have run away from time, and thus from mortality. I have poked and prodded and lived with my phobias. I have reasoned and reflected; I have weeped and written. I drew Tarot Thirteen on my 64th birthday. This wrestling with death, with time, with the dark shadows has only begun. I drew the card of death, but I drew a final chance to fully and righteously live.

© 2011