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The father stood over the bassinet, staring at his child as if he didn’t quite understand how this had happened. It was a look I saw often on the faces of fathers, for whom pregnancy wasn’t real until this very moment. A mother has nine months to get used to sharing the space where her heart is; for a father it comes on sudden, like a storm that changes the landscape forever.
Babies are such blank slates. They don’t come into this world with the assumptions their parents have made, or the promises their church will give, or the ability to sort people into groups they like and don’t like. They don’t come into this world with anything, really, except a need for comfort. And they will take it from anyone, without judging the giver.
What no one told me about grief is how lonely it is. No matter who else is mourning, you’re in your own little cell. Even when people try to comfort you, you’re aware that now there is a barrier between you and them, made of the horrible thing that happened, that keeps you isolated.
The piano keys are black and white but they sound like a million colors in your mind.
I used to wonder if a mother could see the shift when her child became an adult. I wondered if it was clinical, like at the onset of puberty; or emotional, like the first time his heart was broken; or temporal, like the moment he said I do. I used to wonder if maybe it was a critical mass of life experiences – graduation, first job, first baby – that tipped the balance; if it was the sort of thing you noticed immediately when you saw it, like a port-wine stain of sudden gravitas, or if it crept up slowly, like age in a mirror. Now I know: adulthood is a line drawn in the sand. At some point,
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It is a strange thing, being suddenly motherless. It’s like losing a rudder that was keeping me on course, one that I never paid much mind to before now. Who will teach me how to parent, how to deal with the unkindness of strangers, how to be humble?
friendship is a smoke screen. The people you think are solid turn out to be mirrors and light; and then you look down and realize there are others you took for granted, those who are your foundation.
