B-Roll: One Year Since Mom Died

I never knew the term B-Roll until I started working with Yoga International.  A-Roll is content you are used to seeing and what you pay for--  classes, tutorials, courses, etc.  B-Roll is all the the stuff that makes its way into promotions and marketing— pics with my dog, weird camera angles, off-script moments.

After filming a series today, we did B-Roll for promotions. In the midst of everything, I was being silly and cracking myself up. Serena, who was in charge of production and who I was meeting for the first time this week,  said to the camera folks, “Make sure you get that—Christina cracking up on her mat is the best.”

Anyone who practices with me or comes to my workshops and trainings knows that I spend a lot of time laughing on my mat. As much as I love esoterica, deep mysticism,  anatomy and educational theory, I love having fun. And I do make a lot of fun. I make fun of myself, the human predicament, the current culture of yoga, the world-at-large  and the circumstances to which culture has delivered us  individually and communally.

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​Tonight is February 13th. Tomorrow is February 14th. Most of you will celebrate tomorrow as Valentine’s Day. I will mark the day remembering my mother who died last year on February 14th, after 6 days in the  ICU. 

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I miss my mother. 

Weirdly, I also feel my mom  constantly since she died so her absence has brought new meaning to what it means to me  miss someone. How is it that missing someone sits  right alongside feeling them always with me?

This question, I suppose,  is the wonder of human potential. 

I used to be interested in human potential as it related to yogic powers, extra-sensory perception, and utilizing  100% of our brain.  Somewhere between my 45th year and now (months away from 50)  I became  more interested in my personal  human potential to love, to care, to sacrifice intelligently, willingly and whole-heartedly. I became less interested in ESP and more interested in what it means in practical application  to be who I most truly am. And, while I know the thread of “who I most truly am” is a long and winding road to something well beyond my psychology, that very same  thread passes through my very  human life, my very human psychological structures as well as my very deepest longings of Spirit. 

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I am a quiet, withdrawn, “do-not-talk-to-unless-you-have-to-before-10am” kind of person. Like, unless there is a fire. (Or, to be honest, unless if I want to talk. I know, the rules are inconsistent, but, well, I contain multitudes...) And while I am funny, charismatic, outspoken, opinionated and prone to long diatribes of story-telling and explanation in my teaching, alone at home, first thing in the morning, I want the world to shut the eff up.

Mom, on the other hand,  used to wake up and start talking., She would walk with her walker and an assistant through the house commenting on all the toys Locket had chewed and were left eviscerated in the living room. Then she would  talk to the cats who were waiting for her on the kitchen table. (Don’t judge— I have terrible boundaries and I know it.) Then,   Mom would talk to Dad and me and Kelly and whoever else might be around.  She asked questions like,  “What kind of bird is that?” She made comments like, “Look at the deer!” And when we had a rare three days of cloudy weather and she could no longer see the mountains out front, she looked at me and said, “I miss my majesty. I want to see my mountains again.”

"Don’t we all, Mom?"  I remember thinking… “Don’t we all?” (Miss our majesty, that is.)

Of course, as life would have it,  on February 15th, the day after she died, the house was silent in the morning.

What did I miss most?

I  missed her chatter, her laughter, her inane comments and  her questions to which I never had very good  answers. The same  behaviors  I was annoyed by every morning were what  I missed the most the first day she was no longer with us physically. 

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​My mom’s physical presence was B-roll. She wasn’t the one out front selling content, making a living, insisting on structure, order and common sense at all costs. Mom— especially in her later years— was the one behind the scenes, cracking up on her mat, and finding fun where she could. 

Of course, that sense of joy was not always the case.

Her recovery after her second stroke was hard. I witnessed her struggle with walking, which she was never able to do again without assistance. I witnessed her struggle to find her words again and give voice to her ideas and concerns.  And, later than I wish, I witnessed the way her quick-witted, highly-verbal, fast-talking and loving family members didn’t slow down long enough to make it safe for her to speak. I witnessed her withdrawal and her depression as she dug deep to make peace with her situation.

I also witnessed her emergence from that underworld.

I saw  the ways she came back to life when she and Dad  moved in with us a few years ago. I watcher her  find  joy in the dog, the cats, the mountains, her church, her PT and  OT, and the women in her Bible Study group. She also liked my cooking and the homemade ice cream I made for her, but that is probably another story.

The thing is, Mom was the B-roll for our family.  She didn’t just talk or ask questions or insist that everything be presented in a neat and orderly way. She  cracked herself up. Sometimes she laughed about life. Sometimes she laughed  about others. Sometimes she laughed about herself. She had an irrepressible joy and a smile that could light up a room. 

I do not mean she was never depressed. I mean, that she never gave up and life never stopped answering her question of how to find joy.  In that way, she was super-human.

​At the very least, she was a super human.

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​On the eve of the first anniversary of her  passing,  after filming some content and some “B-roll” far away from home, I am writing with tears in my eyes and gratitude in my heart for what she taught me while she was alive and for what her living memory continues to reveal to me. Andrea Cheek Frosolono was an exemplary mother to me and my sister,  a great wife to my father and a wonderful, reliable  friend to many. She lives on in the sound of my own cackling laughter, my commitment to bring joy to life and to “make fun” in the ways that I can and in the numerous contributions she made to those she loved.

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One of my friends from high school wrote me after he found out Mom died. He asked me how I was doing. He had lost his dad a year or two earlier. I said, “Well, I am fine. And yet, I woke up this morning  and realized this was the first day of my entire life when I didn’t have my Mom.”

He told me, “Yeah. That feeling that something isn’t quite right and that you are missing something you have always had doesn’t really go away. At least it hasn’t for me. But it does get easier to live with. You will get more used to it.”

As I have gotten older, I find promises such as his more meaningful than larger notions of transcendence and “complete recovery.” I don't mind living with a tinge of sorrow remembering my mom because it keeps me tender-hearted. It’s okay that life  won’t ever be the same, that I won't  ever be the same because who I am growing into is being formed by the whole of life, not just the easy parts. That is the example Mom set, whether she knew she was doing  it or not.  

Like I said, she was a super human.

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And if you have gotten this far into my entry, thank you for staying the course. I have been keeping these entires  to 1000 words this last year or so and now I am watching my word count creep up to almost 1400. To paraphrase Mark Twain,  "If  I had more time, I could have written a shorter blog entry."  Thanks for reading and taking time to share your stories with me. Mom's life was a testimony to community and the support that is possible when "two or more are gathered" and I am happy to be gathered with you. 

More soon.