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The Call that Changed Everything… February 5, 2025

I looked over at the dining table.
My heart dropped, and simultaneously began to race,
as my youngest son’s voice
seemed to fade into silence.
A silence replaced by
a once-familiar ringtone —
now strangely foreign.
A ghost note.
A summons.
A knowing.

Each heartbeat quaked through me.
The buzzing grew louder.
Like a wasp trapped in the walls of the living.

“Should I ignore it?”
“I could just keep talking to my son…”
“Maybe I’ll call her back later.”
“But why is she calling?”
“She never calls.”

Every voice inside me rose up —
not in harmony, but in instinct.
Shield me. Warn me. Prepare me.
But no voice could soften what was coming.

I knew.
This time… I knew.
That screen, glowing with her name —
my stepmother.
The one who would carry the news.
The one I had somehow already met in dreams.
Already walked this road with.
In the undercurrents of my own knowing.

And then…
the text.

“Hey Baby Girl, is there any way you can give me a call…”

I didn’t finish reading it.
I didn’t have to.
Because grief doesn’t wait for punctuation.

My hand moved like it was underwater.
I answered the phone.

“Hello?”
“Yolanda?”
“Yes?”

Her breath caught the way time does,
right before it breaks.

“I need to tell you somethi—”

“Yes,” I interrupted.

But what I was really saying was,
Please don’t.

“Your birth—”

I pulled the phone away.
As if that would save me.
As if distance ever stopped a soul from breaking.

“Mother has died.”

My birth mother is dead.

And something inside me knew she had died long before this call…

February 3, 2025…

But… this, this was the moment she was declared.
Named in the land of the living,
as no longer part of it.

I held the tears at bay at first.
I answered questions. I nodded. I moved.
I did what grief requires when it hasn’t yet made its full descent.

But when the door closed behind me,
when no one was watching—
it came.

That low wail.
That cracked whisper.
That ancient keening that comes not just from the lungs,
but from the lineage.

A daughter turned orphan.
Again.

Because how many times
had I already lost her?

In her silence.
In her absence.
In her refusal to be anything close to what that word implies…
And yet—
hope never left entirely.
Not because it was cruel,
but because it was faithful.
A quiet ember, flickering in the dark.
The kind that doesn’t demand,
but waits.
Soft.
Steady.
Still believing
in the impossible bloom.

The Offering

So what do you do
with the grief of a mother
who was never truly yours?

You make it holy.

You don’t pretend she was what she wasn’t.
But you name what she was.

A wound. A mirror. A catalyst.
A story that forged your voice
by never making space for it.

And now,
you take up space anyway.

You become the mother you never had.
To yourself.
To your lineage.
To your sacred becoming.

You let the grief change you—
not into someone smaller,
but into someone true.

This is the fire you survived.
This is the altar you now tend.

Not only to mourn her.
But to remember yourself.

This is my spell:
Her death will not silence me.
It will not define me.
It will not undo what I have rebuilt
from the ash she left behind.

Because I am not just the echo of what was.
I am the chorus of what will be.

It ends with you.
But it also begins with you.

Because I am not just the daughter of the dead.
I am the living threshold.
The grief-bearer.
The legacy weaver.
The one who decides
what this death becomes.

White roses. Red taper flames. A candle lit in the center — unwavering. Her photo. The coffee. The skull vase holding court like a witness between worlds. This altar is not just remembrance; it’s reclamation — a space where even estranged threads are honored, not for what they were, but for what I’ve chosen to make sacred, anyway.

For the Mother I Couldn’t Reach for in Life

I place your photo here —
not to rewrite the story,
but to tell the truth with tenderness.

These white roses are not for purity.
They are for the ache of what never was
and the grace I offer anyway.

This coffee is for the mornings we never shared.
This flame, for every word left unsaid.
This altar, for every version of me
who longed for your arms and met only silence.

Even though we could not be in relationship during your life,
I am refusing to let estrangement have the final word —
by honoring you in death.

I light this candle not in mourning,
but in recognition.
You were my beginning.
But I am the threshold now.

And I choose to make this sacred.

I am tending the threshold with grace — by honoring her in death.

And that too, is holy!

✦ Invitation

If you, too, are walking with complicated grief—
if the one who gave you life couldn’t hold it with you—
know this:

You are not alone in the unraveling.
You are not unworthy because of what could not be.
And you are not less sacred for honoring them
anyway. Nor are you less sacred, for not! Your choice either way, is HOLY!

May your grief become grace.
May your truth remain whole.
And may your voice be the final word.

With a candle lit and the veil slightly parted,
I remain—

A daughter,
A witness,
A sacred threshold keeper.

Until next time,
🕯️ The Devoted Mystic

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