Spilled Milk

March 15, 2014

Dear Josie,

Today I wore jeans for the first time since you left me.  Maternity jeans.  Isn't it cruel how these are the only ones that still fit?

It seems vain to think about appearance now.  Actually, most things seem trivial these days.  I am beginning to wonder if I ever really "got it" before you.  And I'm incredibly sorry that I had to lose something so significant in order to learn.

It hit me today.  I thought this would happen at the hospital, but it didn't.  I thought I would understand as they wheeled me out, holding nothing more than a bag of slipper socks and a folder of sympathy.  Staring out a big window into my first day without you.

Nope.

Today, of all days.  I was pulling into the driveway from the grocery store and I dropped my car keys at my feet.  Instinctively I bent down to pick them up and there it was, the coffee stain from Christmas Eve.  Your brother was having a meltdown, and I had spilled my small decaffeinated cup of sanity.  I remember not being able to bend down to wipe it up at the time, cursing myself for staining the new car.

I could barely bend over to clean it. I was growing bigger by the day, and so were you. A life so limitless, bursting at the seams quite literally.  Apparently I had missed a spot.

It's so unfair the way it works out.  So miserably, incredibly peculiar.  How can someone hold it together so well at the very moments they should be unraveling, only to completely lose control while holding a bag of groceries on a sunny afternoon?

Clearly now I can bend any way that I please, but the damage is done.  This little blemish in an otherwise immaculate machine, one spot in an otherwise ordinary life, destined to remind me forever of a Christmas full of hope.  A lifetime of less than.

How could something so dark and permanent still smell so sweet?

I loathe the comfort of my own body.  I long for the inconvenience of you, for the days where my worries lay in explanations of chocolate colored stains.

Once I gained my composure I noticed the can of pasta sauce broken in the driveway.  I'll get to it later.

Love,
Mom


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