I had big expectations for Sivananda ashram. Probably too big.
I figured this was my opportunity to recover after my mother’s death. A time for meditation and prayer, yoga and chanting. I would push through my grief one downward dog, one “om shanti” at a time, emerging on other side complete, happy and stitched back together.
Six days at an ashram isn’t enough time for that. I know this now.
Part of the problem is that I’m not sure if I’m doing this properly. I don’t know if my emotions are healthy, or if I’m in such denial that I can barely feel anything at all.
Because what I have now is what I call The Big Empty. It’s a dull, gaping expanse — a hole with a jagged maw that has settled in and made a home in my chest.
The strange thing about it is that I am not actively grieving. The tears don’t threaten to overflow the way they did in those first few weeks. There is no raw, gnawing feeling of sorrow. Sometimes I forget that she’s even gone.
But other times, The Big Empty pulses like a dark heartbeat. That’s when I look around at this massive world and realize my mom is not in it. There are all these breathtaking, sensual, smelly, frustrating, wild, wonderful things I experience every day, and my mother will never see them, never hear about them, never get a taste for them. And that’s not fair.
Every day I prayed at the ashram, and I waited for the answers to come.
Every day I realized I didn’t know what questions to ask.
