Mother

‘we know, we knew, we remember – before the death of one we loved – that being-in-me… is constituted out of the possibility of mourning.’ (Krell, 290)  

Derrida suggests that in mourning there occurs a simultaneous bearing and reconstructing of the dead within the self and a destabilising of the self as the other passes/becomes past and the possibility (or impossibility) of one’s own death is faced;  “In this terrifying lucidity, in the light of this incinerating blaze where nothingness appears, we remain in disbelief itself.” (Derrida, 43)

Is there a connection between the actual, corporeal ‘being-in-me’ of the mother and child, and the being-in-me of internalising the other as part of mourning? And although the future death of the other is a possibility, our own death remains unknowable. Or unbelievable.

(I know your death more surely than I know my own. My self knows the split of one into two. And now you are other I know you will die. I know your death more surely than my own).

image; Colin Glen