How Matthew McConaughey Comforted Me About Mama's Death

Mama was still with us this time last year.

Three months later, she breathed her last. And my heart broke into a million tiny pieces. Her death has bore a hole in my soul that is in the shape of her.

Time has a way of healing a broken heart. Even a heart obliterated by the death of a loved one.
One finds comfort in people and places and prayer. One finds comfort in the thought that she no longer suffers.

One finds comfort in unusual places too.  I did, recently, in the HBO mini-series, True Detective -
starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as partners assigned to track down a serial killer in a dusty Louisiana town.

Matthew McConaughey's character, Rust, is recovering from a near-fatal stab wound in a hospital. Woody Harrelson is Marty. He is present when Rust wakes up from his coma.

This is how their conversation goes:

Rust

Ah, I shouldn't even fuckin' be here, Marty.

Marty
I believe 'no shit' is the proper response to that observation.

Rust 
No, I don't mean like that. It's something else.

Marty
Well, so talk to me, Rust.

Rust
There was a moment - I know when I was under in the dark that something, whatever I'd been reduced to, you know, not even consciousness. It was a vague awareness in the dark, and I could - I could feel my definitions fading.

And beneath that darkness, there was another kind.

It was - it was deeper, warm, you know, like a substance.

I could feel, man, and I know, I knew my daughter waited for me there. So clear. I could feel her.  I could feel, I could feel a piece of my - my pop too.

It was like I was part of everything that I ever loved, and were were all the three of us, just fadin' out. And all I had to to was let go. And I did. I said, "Darkness, yeah, yeah..."

And I disappeared.

But I could - I could still feel her love there, even more than before.

Nothing. There was nothing there but that love.

*   *  *

Born and lived to love, died in love. That's you, Mama. I love you forever.