Thursday, September 24, 2015

On Your Death Day, another letter to Emmett

You feel more like a dream than anything. I never really had you. Never bathed you. I don't have pictures of you with your siblings. You are a dream. I can't remember some things about you, because you aren't here to remind me by being them. 

But I know in even the farthest crevices of my being that you were real. I know because the loss of you is woven like a thread into every cell of my body. I know because I died the day you died. The me that I used to be I buried with you. The me that lives only lives because you didn't have the chance. 

And I'm sorry. With all I am I am so sorry. For all the failings, all the shortcomings, all the crappy, crappy situations that kept us apart. My heart cries for you, I still need you the way every mama needs her baby; in her body and her soul, I ache to hold you and smell my milk on your breath. Not just today, every day. Every single day. 

Emmett! I didn't get to know you like you knew me. I guess now you know even so much more. You always knew so much more, old soul. What is it, this message of your life? What is it I am supposed to know and glean and learn? 

I hate life and am also intoxicated by it. I know nothing matters but those we love, yet I want everything. Because I want to feel it all. I've held my dead son and cried and drowned in grief. I have had everything stripped from me and then gutted. I want to feel the other side of human existence now. 

These things we living hold so dear - like pride and being right and getting what's ours, and getting what we can out of others - that's the stuff children talk about. That's lower level stuff. What can you give, how can you bless, how can you help, who can you grow? Do we still not see that it is in our emptying that we are fulfilled? Stupid comfort zones. They are pots too small for our roots, and we can't tell that we're just slowly dying.

I am so empty Emmett. I died with you. I'm old old old in my soul now. I see now that it's all folly, so I dance with fury and embrace my dreams with zeal. Because sophistication is a mask and an illusion, and we are just dust. 

You bright and shining profound Truth, my Emmett. You are my greatest treasure and my greatest achievement. I am your Mom. You honor me with that choice. You've made me who I am now. How amazing. 


So hey, reader, I'm Emmett's mom. And Emmett died. That's everything and all that matters.