There exists a portal that is felt deeply within the cells of a bereaved mother. An ache for what she once carried in her womb, her heart, her arms that is no longer presenting itself in that familiar form.
I begin to feel this almost to the date a month before or more the day that my son, Douglas, shed his earth suit. It matters not where I am nor how busily engaged I might be. It's in the quiet moments when I can hear my house exhale, upon the dawn of the morning that familiar ache finds me. Settling itself within the gaps between my bones and settling itself into my mother's heart.
As I inch closer to fifteen years without my son earth side, I have been learning how to allow it to have its way with me. I can be mid sentence in a conversation and my laughter switches to a lump, a silence and I allow the tears to flow.
There exists an abyss in my terrain. It stands in the vista of my landscape and no matter how many shovel fulls of dirt I try to heave within it, it cannot be filled nor smoothed over. It will always contain rocks, protrusions, as those are my living reminders of once was that I can invite to come along with me as I move into creating what is now.
Allowing myself to inch my way closer to the abyss and stand on its jagged edges is what I am called to do now. I can throw things down into, whisper quietly, scream my lungs out and there exists no echo. It swallows my words whole, my tears and to where they go I do not know, yet I can imagine.
No longer feeling the urge to jump down into that bottomless hole that I thought might swallow me whole in those first days, months, weeks and years of acute grief. It stands as a demarcation of time of what was and what is now.
I remind myself and the bereaved women who walk alongside of me that we have a choice. We can leap into that abyss if we need to or we can stand on the edges. There is no right or wrong way ever, only our way no matter what our minds might insist upon.
Yet, one thing I do know for sure almost fifteen years later is that I find my son traversing the edges and within the centers of my life now. Douglas is also in the abyss, yet he gently takes my hand in his and guides me to the surface once again where we can breathe, be and continue to grow our relationship as mother and son.
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