Ostriches don’t actually bury their heads in the sand.

Another myth bites the dust. Too bad, I would very much like to bury my head in the sand, at least until Mother’s Day is over. It doesn’t matter where you turn, there is Mother’s Day stuff all over the place, saturated with pink bows and potted plants.  But now that I have learned that ostriches don’t bury their heads, I will have to devise another plan.

Paradox. I am a mother, I have a surviving child who is the delight of my heart. But still only the overriding pain of loss exists for that day. It is normal, it may never be any different, that too is normal. That is what we learn, grief for a child is a life long journey.

Paradox. Fear of losing the living child. Fear that thumps in your throat. Temptation to detach and isolate.  If I do not invest, then when loss comes it won’t destroy me. How to be a parent to a surviving child? Fear of driving the survivor away with your grief. Do you speak of the dead child, or not? Forget that idea, I can’t speak for the tears.  The migraine pounds.

You watch the one and your heart screams that there should be two. Always there was two. Unbalanced. We are raw, hyper-sensitive, easily confused.  And we are not alone, this is the silent aftermath that is left when death steals a child. Families struggle to rebuild. How do you remember the one and not neglect the living? How can you hold both their lives in your heart at the same time? How do you live so that the surviving know they are enough? And they are, they are the force that drives you to get up.

I go to the greenhouse in search of tomato plants hoping that it won’t be busy, I can slip in and slip out.  And walking through the rows and rows of plants, it hits me so fresh, I will never see Justin again in my lifetime.  He won’t ever be back.  And no, don’t even think the “D” word, I have not been in denial.  But truths of such magnitude take a long time to be absorbed and spoken out loud in your mind. Intellectually you know the truths of death, but then out of the blue, and usually in the most inconvenient places, your brain shouts it out to you.  Grief for a child is like standing in front of a fire hydrant when it is released. You are knocked down and battered, and then for the rest of your life you learn how to stand and walk in that stream of pounding water. We grow stronger and more vulnerable at the same time, our hearts expand to love deeper, but we will not tolerate fools. Paradox, we are paradox.

I hear the other shoppers ask the age of the parrot in the huge cage, he is over 40 years old.  Even the freaking parrot got to live longer than Justin.  Temptation to forget the garden this year pulls at me, but I remember Justin marveling at how big the basil would get, how towering the tomato plants would be, and I go and pull a wagon to load up the baby plants. I get four different kinds of basil, catnip, and lots of tomato plants. Sort of like kittens, hard to put them down once you pick them up.

I check out, so grateful that no one mentions Mother’s Day.  Just a gentle reminder to plant those tomatoes deep.  He is such a kindly gentleman, gardeners usually are kind. I get a text from Ryan, he is hoping to swing home.  I tell Tasha, she has banging on his bedroom door all day convinced that he is hiding in there.  We both do better with a boy around. I harass him to eat, she harasses him to share what ever I have harassed him to eat.  Its what moms do.

Identity. Who am I now at this very moment in time? What still remains as my primary vocation? I can hear my own wise mother saying to go back to basics. Food to eat, clean clothes to wear, and a clean place to sleep. Pick one, see to it, and then do the next thing. Love those closest with all your heart and the rest will take care of itself.

So I guess I will go out to the abandoned garden boxes, they have lain fallow for two seasons.  I sigh.  I remember that plants want to grow, it doesn’t take much to coax them to take off and go wild in the sun.  But it is hard to see the possibilities in the weeds, hard to imagine order from chaos. But the boy would look at it and say “oh, its not so bad – just think how wonderful it will be.”