I learned this morning that two of my friends lost children last night. One sweet little girl who had been fighting a hard battle for a while now, is finally at peace. And another little girl, taken by surprise in a horrible and unfortunate situation. My heart feels tight in my chest, and my arms keep searching for you every time you crawl away. My love keeps reaching out to places barren out of knowledge of need. But it cannot touch the dark vacuum of absence losing a child must cause. Just the smell of your hair pulls this grasping on the verge of desperation that I have to anchor down with routine. The dishes, the floors.
How brave these mother's are. To face the world. The possibility of life after death, both spiritual and on this earth that goes on without their little girls. How brave to accept love in light of questions about the loveless act of losing. How brave any mother is, to love someone so much at all. You, daughters, causing so much abandon in cautious hearts.
As a mother we learn to be careful of everything. Of every sharp corner, of every mean word, of every reach you make. What a dichotomy to question everything but my love for you out of love for you.
Today, you learned how to point to the nose on your teddy bear. Because of the night, I'm not sure there will ever be a lesson you learn, that I will cheer for with more gratitude.
Sweetness
Just when it has seemed I couldn't bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac
with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world
except the way I stumbled through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving
someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.
I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn't leave a stain,
no sweetness that's ever sufficiently sweet...
Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low
and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief
until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough
to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don't care
where it's been, or what bitter road
it's traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.
-Stephen Dunn
