First Days

In the first days of grief, you will fold in on yourself, you will bend and stretch and never feel at home. You will escape to your bed but it will be the same bed you used to cuddle your child in so you are denied everything, even an escape. Even that small respite.

You will lose weight but not in a good way, in a way that feels like you are disappearing.

Your sweet mom will stay with you and you will feel like the child again and that will strike you as bizarre because you are older than she was when she had you.

You will not be able to stay warm. You will sit by the fire under blankets drinking hot drinks. But you will still feel cold and hollow deep down and everywhere that matters.

You will take a yoga class and your instructor will be beautiful and kind, and it is her kindness that brings tears to your eyes. You will lay there on the yoga mat while heavy rain hits the metal roof and you will have a vision of your son. He is running towards you, in some yellow gold field, sun streaming on his smile, and you are running to him. And you are afraid that in your vision he will sweetly say “Mommy!” the way he always did because how could you claw your way back from that.

But you will slowly start to adapt, to cope, to build around the loss. You will walk outside and the rain will have stopped and the sun will be peeking through. It will shine through December branches over your head and warm you just enough. This will all be so on the nose that you will roll your eyes. But you will still feel that sun.

You have some more days of sun sprinkled In. You begin to welcome the grief, to usher it in, to honor it. It still comes in waves but it does not overtake you. You dance in the living room with your older son, both of you smiling, for a moment the waves recede, the tide goes out. You actually laugh again. You realize your child is not in the grief. Your child is in the hope that follows.