The Night Before

Another cycle.
We are here again, the night before you died.

Your dad and I sit in the living room, not wanting to go to bed, feeling like we don't want tomorrow to come again, don't want it to be true again.  You died.

Four years later I still sit here and feel the shock of it.  What a beautiful boy you are.  In your body you were so full of light, so radiating love.  How we love you still.

And every year for this week it feels like we get you back in many ways. Part of me feels like I will get to hold you again, we get visits from you in different forms.  Loved ones are visited by hummingbirds, we feel you come near to us.  You are always near but the veil is thin this week. And then I think of all the cycles we will go through without you and life feels so long.

This year I hold your baby sister on your anniversary, 6 weeks old on your heaven day. I am so in love with her, amazed by her, grounded by her. I feel like I get to hold you again through her, and in this way the pain is eased.  And yet she makes me feel all we gave up with you,  the extreme thing that was asked of us, the impossible thing, of loving our beautiful son so much and then letting him die.  Letting his warm, soft sweet body become cold. Letting his spirit leave. Helping him with this.

I remember this strangeness when my Grammy was dying. She was in her late 80's, a proper time to die, and I held her feet under the covers, and they were warm, they were the feet of a person, not an old person, just lovely, warm feet. And it was so strange to know that they would grow cold and her blood would stop running and stop being her feet.  It is so strange to me, death.  That change. That shift from life and spirit in the body to the body just being, I don't know, what is it then? Cold and beloved still.  But not the same.

Oh, my son, this is so hard still.  We still love you so tremendously.  And I don't want you to leave. You already left, but still, I don't want it to happen.  I don't want this.  But it is ours.  How can this be our story? The story of the son who died? But it is who we are now.

I think you are happy now, you are fine, you know our love, and the pain is mostly on our side. I am glad you are happy. I am glad you love your sisters.  I long for a time, out of time, when we are all together, loving freely without longing.

I am writing this under the tree where we held you, four years ago, on the lawn, on that beautiful afternoon, and you felt the air, warm, and the slight breeze, and heard the hummingbird talking above us, the light filtered through this big tree's leaves, the height of summer. We were each other's, completely.  To know such love, I know we are so lucky.

And my son, I love you. I will love you forever. You have my heart, and I am devoted to you as your mama.  Help us through this night, it is so hard to accept it.  It is so precious to remember. What an intimacy, that crossing.

Thank you for all the ways you love us.  I pray my heart will open to them, and not be shut in self pity or depression. Although that is part of this at this stage for me. I love you, I love you, I love you. I send you a million kisses, up to the stars, I remember your sweet smell, your soft hair, your hands and feet and belly. I kiss them all over.

Love,
your mama