09/17/07

Today I am not the mother of a dead child, I am just a mother
not that I am so numb to think he sleeps soundly in the next room, but only that today in the some 50 times that he came to mind I was not filled with feelings of sorrow or loss
I did not sit to cry or space out and stare off into nothingness
I not once came to think 'how did he die', 'what could I have changed', 'I should have had an autopsy'
I did not think about my tiny lost child in an ambulance, or hospital bed, or morgue

I know he is not here, I know he has passed on
I know his body is buried and a eulogy read in his memory
but a glitch in my thought process prevents the rush of emotion that accompanies my every thought of him
that he was torn from me, that I should have been there, that he is dead

I have felt this once before, a year or so ago, I went an entire day not crying or thinking about his death, my loss
I felt almost as if when I walked in my front door, he too would be jumping up screaming 'mama mama'
I hated myself after that day, as if I didn't deserve such peace
today I am fine with it and I do not hate that I am calm
I know tomorrow morning when the sun slips itself through the blinds and taunts me to survive another day in his absence, I will pull myself from my slumber and resume my grief, resume my burden of what 'would have been'
I will trade this quiet calm for an unsettling pain that never stops and never will
I took a break today but the painful truth is I have come to feel at home with who I have become...
the mother of a dead child