12/20/2022
I’ll see you out and smile and wave and bid you a Merry Christmas as my breath on the inside of my lungs chokes on sorrow and the ‘who would she be’ questions taunt me because they’ll never get answers.
I’ll politely agree that of course you deserve a break from all the hard things you’ve been dealing with: the relationships that are failing because you fail to realize the hate you hold on to is the problem; stop being so selfish and notice your people are still breathing while you waste time holding court with your ego when you should be throwing it into the ocean, arms widening, making space for the ones you still have on this earth.
I’ll try to steady my eyes from their roll when you tell me how you need a mental break from your high pressured life and hold back from suggesting you try navigating holidays after losing a child and sobbing in the public bathroom at the mall because you feel guilty for hating to shop for the alive kids because it reminds you too much of the unalive one but you can’t talk about it anymore because too much time has past and you’re supposed to be over it because the world has moved on to more important things like your stress levels.
I’ll watch your kids laugh and talk way too loud and even throw temper tantrums when it’s time to leave or they don’t get what they want and secretly I’ll wonder how you would handle it if your kid suddenly died without warning and then I’ll get mad because mine actually did and it’s not some stupid what if game.
I’ll watch you run in and out and race about trying to get a hundred things done and try not to point out that I do that, too, except with me there’s always this soundtrack of grief nonstop playing in the background and even after all these years not a second goes by where I am not painfully aware that my child died and that deep grief changed me, became me. Yet I am not bitter and I am not stuck. In fact, I’m one of the lucky ones, the blessed ones, the ones that can actually see the good and see the beauty and I have grown stronger, more brave, more knowing. By the grace of God I got out of my pit. But getting out doesn’t mean you forget.
I’ll stop suddenly and look around and perhaps you’ll think I forgot something but what I’m really doing is acknowledging in this moment, in this space, surrounded by strangers bustling about, the reality and the probability is that I am not alone, and there’s more than likely another Mama Without trying her very best to hold it all together.
I may not know who you are, but I know a little bit about sorrow and I know a little bit about how hard holidays are when things are no longer fair. Know you are not alone. You are not wrong. You are not crazy. You are not difficult. You are not ruining things. You are loving the hardest love to love - loving in death - and not everyone can understand it.
