cavorting.

'cavorting' is one of my mom's favorite words.
when i was little, and we'd wrestle and tickle each other 'til we cried, or take turns waiting for the other one to drop their guard, so we could lick the other person's face, we called it 'cavorting.'
so, the other day, tab was in here with mom in the early morning, while allen did morning chores around the house.
tab is connects with my mom on a spiritual level, more than anything i can manage. even at my most healy-feelie, i am a heady, brainy lass who has difficult getting her mind to shut its trap. but tab lives a huge portion of her life on her spiritual level, and mom did/does, too. so, that morning, tab sat with mom and watched the sun rise, sang her songs and talked to her. she asked mom how she was doing, and mom said, clear as day, in her normal mom voice,
'i'm cavorting.'
because tab is tab, her response was a deep and soulful, 'word.'
that feels so right.
people here have talked about how aware mom is. how responsive and alert. i have been dubious about this. maybe she's slipping out whenever i get into the room, but i am not seeing a whole lot of alertness from her. perhaps she is responsive sometimes, but i don't imagine her spirit hanging out in this dying body very often. given how comfortable she was/is on a spiritual level, i imagine her slipping out freely, to get herself acclimated with the Beyond, and then popping in every once in a while, to see how we're doing, and how much longer she has to wait for her body to give out.
i just don't feel her here at all.
then again, i have also been thinking really a lot about reality.
in light of my crisis of faith, where thoughts or beliefs that previously brought me comfort now seem empty, i have been looking at the things we tell ourselves to come to terms with reality.
for example, mom not responding to me.
what is true and real is that she doesn't respond to me all the time, at least not in a way that i can recognize.
i can explain that any way i want to.
she's mad at me.
she's out cavorting on the spiritual level.
she's not really aware at all, only awake sometimes. her responses are the result of impulses in her brain that sometimes coincide with what is happening around her and sometimes don't.
all those explanations are just ideas that i have come up with to try to bridge the gap between reality and my understanding.
the truth is, she doesn't always respond to my presence, and i don't know why.
*that* is something i can grab hold of, because it's not open to interpretation.
everything else that i try to grab hold of feels slippery to me, because i just am not sure whether it's true or not, and i am not in a place right now where i am able to just choose to believe because i want to.
i *hope* that she's cavorting on the spirit plane.
i *hope* there is a spirit plain for her to cavort on.
i *hope* that the essence of who we are is eternal, and that some element of her remains available for me to tap into, or will visit me sometimes.
and, what i know for certain is that her life as i know it will end. and our relationship as i know it will end.
i was telling the girls last night, i am not concerned about losing the important aspects of her and my relationship - the intangibles, like our love, or the depth of our connections, or the feeling of her totally nonjudgmental love for me.
the things i am concerned about losing are the physical aspects of her.
like i said before - the texture of her skin; the sound of her voice; her smell; her facial expressions.
those are the things that don't stick around, it seems, and which i am already mourning the loss of.
who we are together, and what we mean to each other, won't ever change.