She had been in a marriage for ten years that
would only last a year or two longer. Her first child
was six and a half years old. Her second child
would have been turning three were they not
buried in a cemetery 45 miles from where she and
her family then lived. She had moved a little more
than a year ago from the town she attended high
school in and where her parents still lived. She was
beginning to form relationships with people who
would be in her life for a very long time. She
worked as a receptionist at a gravel-shipping yard
and had started attending community college.
The friends were different.
The job was different.
The view from her kitchen window was different.
But she was still in the same chair where she nursed and rocked the baby that did not make it.
As a child, my mother’s grief and mood swings confused me. I became accustomed to them as normal. As an adult experiencing the January of my 29th year a country’s distance away from my parents eight years past an abounded marriage, two years past a second terminated pregnancy, ten years past the first six years into working for myself, seven years out of university and considering retrying for a master’s degree, I hold the confused child I was and softly explain there are hurts deeper than boo boos that hurt much longer than a splinter or burn that feel like a backpack of rocks you can’t take off, and I hold them, and I let them cry,
and I love my mother more deeply.
