On Grief And Elephants.

It’s random where it hits, now.  I’m in a produce aisle or a pillow fort and I’ll think, my daughter is dead.  

Of course this is no realization.  Of course I know this to be true, always.  Even if I’m laughing or even when I’m complaining that my toes are cold.  Or that time we had snow cones for dinner and played bubble monsters at bath time.  Of course I knew it then, too.  Tucked away in the cellar of my noisy observations, years and piles and walls, gray and still, there is her skin on mine.  

That morning is a locomotive in my mind.  It exists in snippets, in passing.  Like if I pause too long I might forget to breathe.  Like if I pull the sheets to my chin, I might never stand.  I used to be grateful for the blur; keep me moving, keep it brief.  Keep your hands inside and your eyes ahead and don’t look back. Now all I want is to pause there; take a long afternoon in the throes.  Pull the chain and lurch with the stop. Exhale while she’s still in my arms.  

People said what to expect, as though one can.  As though after one grows one and feels one, and delivers one and buries one, she can ever predict anything again.  They said to hold her, so I did.  They said to feel, so I tried.  They told me  I could survive, thrive even.   Ha!  I scoffed into my catered fruit.   You weren’t there.  You don’t know what I’m without.  

Take pictures, they offered.  What if I never look at them?  I thought.  A mother never forgets, they replied, and they were right.   But they didn’t tell me about the guilt.  Didn’t warn me about the first belly laugh; how I’d slump down in my chair after - turn to no one for approval.  They didn’t say what 75 and sunny feels like now, or how squeals Christmas morning can burn.  No one said there’d come a time I’d have to squint to see her face. Or seven years from now, you will think of her while opening a bomb pop and you won’t even cry. 

We bereaved are re-framers.   We have to be, lest the sun snuff our every waking try.  And so I tell myself the truth, as often as I can.  

You love her, more than anyone ever could.  You honor her, every tear and every crow.  

You’re her mother.  Time’s got nothing on you.