For the
second time in just a few short months, we've been drawn to our televisions by a
tragedy too horrific to even fully grasp. Once more, we learn of the loss of a
child, one who was only 8. And as I write this on Tuesday evening, a second
fatality of the bombings in Boston has been identified, a young woman who was a
child to her mother.
I'm an
author and pretty good, really, at putting words together. I have thousands of
readers now, which I mention here only to underscore my first statement. I'm
pretty good at putting words together. And yet I don't know if I can adequately
convey to you what it is to lose a child.
For those
of us who are mothers, we who carried our babies under our hearts for nine
months, our baby remains our baby, in a very real if emotional sense,
always.
It's
tragic when the victims of these senseless acts of violence are children, not
yet even teens. But every life is precious, and every person lost was at one
time a newborn babe held in his or her mother's arms.
And every
death, every life ended by violence of any kind, is the loss of someone's
baby.
It's the
hardest thing in the world to endure, the loss of a child. It's unnatural. We're
not supposed to bury or children. And yet, some of us do.
When your
child has died you miss him or her every day for the rest of your life. The raw
and bleeding wound of loss does scar over, eventually. You can remember the good
times without shattering into a million pieces, eventually.
But at
first the grief and the pain are so immense you don't know how you can manage to
live through them. And yet you do live through them. The initial shock of having
that knock at the door, of hearing that news, is very much like being stabbed in
the heart. It is a sharp, jagged tear to your flesh, a burning, raging fire in
your soul.
Almost
immediately, there are details to be seen to, and ritual to be observed.
Numbness descends and you find yourself going through the motions, taking that
next step, doing that next thing. You have a list, and a schedule, and you don't
think, you just…do.
Sometimes
those first few days and those rituals are like escaping into a bubble, where as
long as you have something to do, the agony, and the reality, are held at bay.
You can't fall apart; you have to take care of your child.
It is the
last thing you will ever be able to do for him or her.
Then of
course comes that awful moment, when the ritual is over and you are left alone
with your loss. You fall apart then, because you know that it's over: the nine
months of gestation, the pain and joy of delivery; the birthday cakes, and the
report cards and the Christmas mornings.
They are
gone, forever.
If you're
a person of faith then you do take comfort in the knowledge that death is not
the end; you'll see your child again, in God's presence. And in time, the pain
dulls, so that you can remember the good times and the bad, and fall apart less
often. You can remember, and you can smile.
But the
hole that is in your heart is never filled, and that sense that something is
missing in your life is constant. And when you watch your television and hear of
the loss of someone else's baby, you ache for them.
Because
you know, and in a sense that defies logic, for a space of time, you
are them.
Love,
Morgan
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