Time turns differently for the mother of a dead child. Time is slower, much slower, more methodical in it's forward motion. I can sit for an hour and have hundreds of amazing thoughts rush across my mind, and then, just as quickly forget all the fantastic beauty of each of them. Recalling maybe one very simple and mundane task, something like I should boil an egg for breakfast. Everything takes more out of you when you're the mother of a dead child. This world alive with children, children's activities, children's toys, and children's accomplishments is a playground rife with danger for the mother of a dead child. Breathing in the life of the rest of the world's child-filled lives somehow makes each breath a little heavier and laced with the acerbic taste of emptiness.
There is not one thing in life I can do and not be confronted with children and shown the magnificent abundance of having a child in your life and yet simultaneously illuminating the stark absence of any child in my own life. The man in front of me at the plant nursery had his cart filled with a very large handsome glazed strawberry planter and several strawberry plants. He lamented that it was very expensive, but it was for his granddaughter and she deserved the best of everything. She loved to eat strawberries, so they were going to grow her some so she could eat strawberries right out of her own garden. The simple pleasures of being a parent, the richness of being a grandparent, they adorn our lives just as the moon and the stars light up the night sky.
You will always be a mom they tell me. I even say it to myself, as if to affirm I was blessed with the beautiful gift of motherhood. Yes, it's true, I will always be a mom. But I can't practice my craft, I may as well be Picasso without sight, Michelangelo without hands or Barbara Streisand without a voice. The living continue to paint, sing and create all around, surrounding us in the beautiful art of life with children...yet I can only see and hear, never can I join in the dance. I may always be a mom, but how does one "parent" such a being that exists only within my heart and mind and not in life. What do we do with those tonka trucks in the garage and the scrapbooks in the attic that no longer have life attached to them?
For the mother of a dead child, time ticks away slowly, sure to give ample opportunity to see the beauty of everyone else's child. To feel how wondrous and beautiful they are, to linger at the sweet smell of a newborn baby, to laugh at the squeals of a toddler, to play with a youngster and to sit and enjoy the company of a young adult. No matter how beautiful that moment may be, the tick tock of that clock tells me...I'm the mother of a dead child.
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