Mom goes to the MOMA

At the MOMA
You know how vertigo is sometimes described as the fear that you secretly WANT to jump and just might?
I went to the Museum of Modern Art today -- I'm in NYC for the weekend -- and there were two instances of emotional vertigo.... if you know what I mean. It was two Yoko Ono exhibits that got me, catching me totally off-guard. There I am looking at the history of the modern kitchen, and landscape architectural studies of how climate change will affect the shoreline and infrastructure of Manhattan, and suddenly...
*aaauuuggghhhhhhh!* 
I hear a scream.
I go around the corner and look over a balcony into the huge atrium space, 4 stories high and maybe an acre in size. There is a microphone on a stand in the middle. It's a Yoko Ono "sound art" piece, inviting people to come and make a noise and hear it in this space. I see people one by one screwing up their courage and going to scream into the mic. Some are high shrieks, others long low yells. Men, women, and children. 
My throat closed. What would come out of my face if I allowed a scream? Would it be clear that this was not just for 'art' but it was real pain and sorrow? Would I be able to pull myself together afterwards? 
Then I reflected (this is all in a second, as most thoughts fly that way) and remembered that everyone has pain. Probably there was human sorrow or frustration or fear behind every scream I was listening to. Did I go down and scream? No... but I felt the pain like a rock in my chest. I felt how much losing a child of any age is an unbearable rock that we do somehow bear.
Fast forward to the Sculpture Garden. I see people hanging small notes all over a small dark-red leafed ornamental tree... a cherry or crab. I went and read the instructions. Oh... from Yoko again! I guess she knows something about loss! She has created the Wishing Tree. Each person is invited to write a wish and hang it on the tree. It is COVERED with tags. I wrote: "I wish I knew for sure that Andy was at peace." I didn't write that I wished I would have him visit in a dream, or send me a sign. I thought about wishing for Byron and Caitlin to be happy, or for Heidi to fall in love again someday, or for my parents to not suffer in their end... but I wish those things all the time. It felt special, like a place to wish something I had never even known I needed to wish.
Even if every wise mama on earth told me that Andy was at peace, I don't know that I would feel it for sure. I need to get there for myself. 
In the atrium listening to the screams, and tying my wish onto the tree, I felt tremendously sad, and grateful, and confused. Somehow it was a sense of falling. Loss of control, I guess. Unexpected, like those jolts of adrenalin that wake you up as if you were falling. 
I don't usually have such visceral physical sensations with emotion. This was a powerful day of being on my own and letting the feelings wash over me...