I Didn’t Know

Opening my eyes, dreaming of a baby crying, I wake on your 35th birthday. Our tenth birthday without you.

The refrain of “I didn’t know” plays in my brain, framing a new portrait of myself.

I didn’t know that the ninth anniversary of your death last September would leave me fragile, that all I would conceive that day was the herald of the tenth anniversary of your death.  A decade of your absence. An advent lasting a year as we began to experience the year of tenths. We survived the year of firsts and the year of seconds, this year of tenths is extracting an enormous amount of life from me, from us.

I didn’t know I would feel a suffocating fear of growing old without you.

I didn’t know that I would dream of not existing. Not wanting to go through the mechanics of dying, but a pervading wish that I could just fade and disappear.

I didn’t know that I would feel irrelevant, disposable, only good for what I could provide, that my exhaustion made me forgettable.

I didn’t know how my heart would ache for want of your voice, for you to tell me that my life did mean something even if you were dead.

I didn’t know I would feel abandoned.

I didn’t know that there was pain greater than your death, that pain multiplies and lives in the marrow of my bone.

I didn’t know the pain of exclusion, now I do.

I didn’t know the pain of struggling to build a life after your death, finding joy again and then to have that life ripped away too. And not once, but again and again. My brain can’t reconcile that pain and to try is madness. Now I know that life building is an every day task, a mindful, intentional task.

I didn’t know that hope is a burden.

I didn’t know the pain of losing my faith and my entire belief system.

I didn’t know the pain of losing my identity, of belonging no where.

I didn’t know the fierce joy and liberation of losing my faith and my entire belief system.

I didn’t know the release of losing my identity and belonging no where, so that I had the freedom of being anyone and every where in my search.

I didn’t know that isolation and social distancing would not frighten me.

I didn’t know that child loss prepares one for social distancing and isolation.

I didn’t know that solitude is a master craft that takes years to learn, but is a gift that cannot be stolen.

I didn’t know that I would become unrecognizable to my own self and that I would make decisions based on a person that no longer existed.

I didn’t know that it was okay to make mistakes.

I didn’t know that child loss is chronic and will always demand its share of my energy.

I didn’t know that one day I would ask my body for its reserves, only to have it tell me that I was overdrawn.

I didn’t know that legacy would become more important than presence. I can have everything and everyone I love taken away, but I write my own legacy. I write my own story.

I didn’t know that a focus on legacy would inform the decisions I make moment by moment, it brings a startling clarity.

Your birth was the beginning of my journey through motherhood, the beginning of your journey in this world, two people were born that day.

I didn’t know I would have to say goodbye first.

I didn’t know I wouldn’t get to say goodbye.

I didn’t know that there would be no more cakes.

I will not live in ignorance of what I do know now.

I know that life is short.

I know that nothing stays the same, all life is nothing but change.

I know that if today you have flour, sugar, and eggs in your house, make a cake. Make a cake for no reason except that you can. Make a cake because you are alive and that in itself is sufficient reason for cake. Make a cake and remember a boy with a mop of curls and shining eyes.

Happy Birthday Justin.
Love, Mom