Everest

Dear Josie,

Today I'm at the bottom.  I have been here for some time now, but today feels different.  You see, I'm looking up now, in the literal sense. This wasn't possible before. 

The climb is cold.  Silent like the morning I held you, warm and still in my arms. 
But that warmth, it doesn't stay. 
With each step I am closer to the top, farther from the safety of the ground.  This ground where I've been hiding, content and safe and small. 

So you steady my grip, hands trembling they can feel you.  Tighten the pose, as if I were to dance on this ice.  Here in my Everest.  Here on my second chance. 

And I can hear them as I rise, slowly, reluctantly I rise. 

And they tell me yes I can. And they say it isn't far, that I will make it.  But there is a difference between us now. 
I know how it feels to fall, to fall from such a height that is to know death.  To grip it with my fingers, watch the life slip from them.  Grasp the air at thirty thousand feet. 

I lost myself in the descent.  The edges taking something from me, tangible in its beginning. Then gradually, they steal for a lifetime. 

This fall, it nearly killed me.
And I'd say it was for nothing, if there wasn't just the one. 

It didn't. 

Love,
Mom