My Mom, Ilene Evans, Croaked on May 12, 2023

My mom croaked on May 12, 2023. Using "croaking" to describe her emergence into non-physical reminds me to keep it light and to be happy. She achieved her learning goals and purpose during this lifetime and has moved past the limitations she had here in the physical realm. She is truly free and whole and is back to being who she truly and fully is as an eternal being. So much fun for her again!

We are eternal beings having a temporary physical experience. It makes sense to me that when we pass from this physical existence, we joyously re-emerge into the non-physical, eternal being that we are. I don't believe there really has been any ending of who Ilene Evans really was, she just moved on without her current body. She was 80 years old and seemed to become frail and faded after being hit by a car in 2022. Her last year was filled with physical pain and high emotions and it was the stress of it all that finally resulted in her exit. I believe it was her planned exit, but she had maybe forgotten about it during the business of living and it came as a surprise to all of us.

Last Picture a few days before Ilene transitioned

She had spent most of her adult life as a disabled person, so I am so excited for her new emergence into non-physical. Finally, she is whole and happy and knows all the things she struggled to know in her existence here. Of course, I miss the physical things we did together. I miss having her here to do things for. I miss the goofy gifts that she gave to all of us in the family whenever she saw something she thought would delight us. She was always willing to share with her family a half a box of Oreos or chocolate covered cherries or 1 toothbrush (left from a 2 toothbrush pack) or child size M Spiderman or Dora the Explorer underwear she had picked up at Ross. "It should fit someone, right?" We were always appreciative of the love behind the gifts. She was a person who thought of others even when she had lots of hard things going on in her life and I really aspire to be like her in that way.

She is still out there, all around us, having the time of her life back in the wholeness of who she is. I am happy for her to be fully aligned with her eternal being/soul/spirit/non-physical self. A lot of my ideas about the passing from this existence back to our non-physical wholeness come from the teachings of Abraham Hicks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=a2v1T53o1es .

Their teachings resonate with me and also bring me comfort. They also give me words and ideas and skills to pass on to my kids about how they should feel about my croaking when that inevitable time comes. And being able to move forward and be happy in spite of whatever happens in our lives is a real skill that I hope they can develop and cultivate in any moment. Resilience and optimism and inner peace. Even at the moment when their mom croaks.

My mom, Ilene, learned many things in this lifetime. A lot of challenging, painful, confusing and difficult things. She really "took it for the team" as far as growing the collective consciousness. She was an emotional badass and grew through the many experiences of her eternal being in the physical body it inhabited from 1942 to 2023. I am so honored to be her daughter. She was incredibly strong and resilient in spite of it all.

She had a childhood filled with fun memories of berry picking in the White Mountains near Pendleton and competing for Miss Wallingford in the Seafair princess pageant in 1959. She had many interesting moments peddling political pamphlets written by her abusive, alcoholic, unhinged father around their neighborhoods, and harder moments of physical and mental abuse at the hands of her father and strangers as a child. The last time she saw her dad, at age 16, she had grabbed a knife and was going to kill him for another beating of her mother. My grandma locked her in a closet until her father had left the house.

My mom married young and her marriage was defined by the alcoholism of her husband (my dad, now sober for over 40 years) that left her struggling to raise her 2 kids (mostly alone in his drunken absence) in poverty and powerlessness and pain and loneliness. She finally got away from that situation with my dad when she felt my brother and I were "old enough to handle dealing with him" on our own.

In 1978, at the age of 36, she had a psychotic break while enjoying her life as a newly single, empty nester, going for her Masters in Art at Eastern Washington University. She had just earned her Bachelor of Arts in Art and Sociology at the University of Puget Sound and was ready to embrace her independence, but it all went wrong.

Her life wasn't easy before that, but after that, the difficulty level elevated and didn't let up until the day she croaked. She was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic that same year. She was confused, vulnerable, afraid and delusional but remained beautiful, loving and hopeful in spite of all the mental chaos she experienced. She had a cerebral artery brain aneurysm in 1985 during a period when she was homeless and living in her car. She had a surgery that required the clamping off of 1/2 her brain. Xrays showed it looked like a shriveled up walnut after the surgery. She was comatose for weeks and we were told she only had a 1% chance of living and, if she lived, she had a 1% chance of ever living alone. She spent most of that year at Harborview Medical Center learning how to be human again. She was left with the cognitive ability of an 8 year old, short term memory loss, left side blindness, deafness and weakness and challenges galore.

When she got out of the hospital, she was placed in an adult family home and she hated every minute of it. My brother and I were 23 and 24 years old at that time and we became her advisors, her helpers and her supporters for the next 37 years. We agreed to help her live independently, against the advice of doctors. She managed to control the direction of her own life and live alone (when not in nursing care) until the day she croaked. There are a million stories about the misadventures of Ilene living alone, but that is an entire book I should write some day.

In 1999, while crossing the highway with her white cane (she was legally blind and deaf) and carrying a giant rubber toy fly (to bring to her baby granddaughter!??!) she was hit by a pickup truck. She landed on her head and had to have a 2nd craniotomy. That 2nd brain injury left her with the inability to sort and really affected her balance. Her life became harder after that and still, she managed to live on her own. She became a hoarder and very isolated as her paranoia seemed to grow over the years. During covid, she was all alone most of the time as we were all living in fear of the unknown or of making each other sick. During those years her hoarding became really bad and it really strained the relationships she had with all of the family. We all wanted to love her but the hoarding was out of control and she smelled bad and was dirty and was not willing, nor able, to allow us to help her clean or de-clutter. It was a rough period.

In June 2022, she was in another crosswalk and was hit by a car. That accident broke her leg which was horrible, but at least it got her out of her hoard and into a clean living facility. One of the happiest days of the last year was when I went to visit her after she had been cleaned up, shampooed and showered and I could give her a big hug. It was hard to give her a hug in the 5 years before the accident because she had rats living with her in her home and they were very untidy (another long story). I loved my crazy momma! She was the most stubborn, incorrigible, wild and independent kid I ever had. I wish I had the gift of seeing and interacting with those who have passed, like my mom and others in my family do, but I don't. I can only imagine how she is, but I am sure she is kicking ass and taking names and continuing her eternal growth in ways that are amazing and powerful!

My brother recently had tattooed on his forearm, in our mom's handwriting, part of a note that she left to comfort us in the event of her croaking. It was written by her in 1995, and stored away until it was found in her belongings this year. It sums up how she lived and truly shows just how wise and knowing and special she was, in spite of all the hardships she encountered in this lifetime she wanted us to understand how she felt about it all: "I take each new experience with a grain of salt, and a great deal of curiosity. I love you. Mom"

Thank you so much Ilene Ann Evans for all of the lessons I learned from you. Your story is long and convoluted and I hope I actually write as much of it as I can remember some day soon. You were a beautiful star and I love you so much. I am so glad I picked you to be my Mom!