The Hills Above My Neighborhood

I have debated writing this for two years. I am a scientist. I work in environmental research and I have spent my career following evidence where it leads, and where it leads is almost never toward the supernatural. I want that on the record before I write what I am about to write. My mother died in October 2022. We had a complicated relationship, meaning she was difficult and I spent most of my adult life at a careful distance from her. By the time she got sick we had not been close for years. I flew to Albuquerque when she went into hospice. I sat with her. She was not conscious. She died on a Tuesday morning and I drove back to Santa Fe the same day because there was nothing else I could do there and I needed to be in my own space. I went for a walk that evening in the hills above my neighborhood, which I do most evenings. The sun was going down behind the Jemez Mountains. I was not thinking about my mother specifically. I was mostly just numb. And then something happened that I cannot fit into any category I have. I became suddenly and completely certain that my mother was at peace. Not hopeful. Not wishful. Certain, in the way you are certain that the ground is under your feet. And with it came something else: a sense that she had understood things, at the end or after, that she had not understood during her life. That the difficulty between us was not the last word. That something had been resolved that I did not know needed resolving. I stood there in the hills above Santa Fe until it was almost dark. I cried. I drove home. I do not know what happened. I am not going to claim I do. I have no framework for it and I have not gone looking for one. What I know is that I have not carried that relationship the same way since. Something set it down for me. Whatever it was, I am grateful.