Dear Mother

Dear Mother,

I'm so sorry you're here.  I don't mean the logistics of "here", of course.  Right now, wherever you are:  the hospital, their closet, your bathroom floor.

I mean everywhere. Everything you must do and all of the space you will occupy without your child, whatever and wherever that is, for the rest of your life.

I wish I could promise you some epiphany, years later, to make this part easier.  The reality is that at this moment there is so much you cannot know, because you can't yet see beyond the wall, or the rug, or the cold tile on your cheek.  At this moment you cannot fathom a tomorrow, or maybe you don't want to and that's okay.  The first lesson is that it comes, just the same.

Right now, death is a shock to your system. It is jarring and unwelcome and not yet familiar. Death arrived in an unremarkable afternoon.  And you dug in and you said no, and you begged and you begged and you begged, but it took everything from the most capable of arms, anyway.

Right now you are the stuff of nightmares: an open, festering wound and many will treat you accordingly.  You aren't yet accustomed to the stares or the questions, but you will bear them anyway.  In morning drop off lines and pharmacy parking lots and over iced coffee that Sunday you felt brave.  They'll tell you that you're strong and you will smile but it will feel foreign, like the sun on your face.  And you will go home and yell out in your sleep.  And you will read autopsy reports in your garage, fingers bleeding over daggers on the paper.  And every day will feel like a robbery, or like rubbing your heart on sandpaper, but you don't stop because you're her mother, and because you promised her you wouldn't. 

Right now you can't know that there are friends who will disappoint you; that some of the faces behind you now, won't be there in five years when you turn around.  Some will have left you in a showy spectacle, arms flailing and words like stone to flesh.  Even more will have shuffled out quietly, behind years of unrequited text messages, awkward barbecues and unfollow buttons.  Right now you can't see them parting gradually, subtly, as if you wouldn't notice.  But you'll notice, dear mother.  You will feel every one. 

And right now you cannot know that there are harder days ahead.  Days where the bruising has faded but the love has not.  Days where they forget but you remember, because you will always remember.  And on these days you will say no.  "No" to the meeting and "No" to the toy aisle and "No" to the kind stranger who asks.  And on these days you will cry.  And on these days you will beg for one more...  Chance.  Photo.  Second.  And on these days, four-year-olds on escalators will bring you to your knees.  

But right now you cannot know that you'll survive it. 

...That there are those who got up from the floor; and those who will show you how.

That there are people who stay.  People with hearts like the sky, even when you're distant and dramatic and scary.  There are people who will show up and who will love you and who will stay.  And stay and stay and stay.  

That somehow, despite all you've lost, your hands will still crave connection and your eyes will still search the light, even from the darkest of closets. 

That death will offer you what it can:  abruption and isolation and finality.  Dreams of black and blue and traumatic firsthand...


And then you will stand up, and you will take so much more.  

xo, 
Nora