Motherhood as I Know It

Ode to the empty armed mother,
Song to my wombless child,
Forever the gravesite watcher,
Sadness hits me like the tide.
I see his face in the trees,
I feel his life in the breeze,
Wish I could bottle his spirit,
His life I couldn't save in me. 

My son Gabriel, so long passed away, is ever a sadness and a blessing at the same time. I watch for him, almost like Rapunzel in the tower, only it is I who seeks his spirit, and wish I could send him that lifeline that was destroyed in my womb now twelve years ago. Such a glorious sadness, an unrequited love for something I wanted so much, yet the choice was not mine to make.

The exhaustion in my body after so many years of illness now knows that his passing was a three-fold result of fate. Had he been born, he would not have survived, nor, likely, would have I. And even if we both survived, we both would have faltered in the storm that has come these last twelve years.

A sadness and joy that is so difficult to describe, how one can feel them both simultaneously is a mystery I still can't solve. I seek him out in ever breath, in every moment. I know he's in me as much as my own soul is within me. Or I am within him. Perhaps my survival has been by nothing less than his life sacrificed, for my life survived.

No apologies for any sadness induced by your reading these words that help me heal and grow as I continue to cope with the loss of a child. Of actually two children, only the first was lost in those first weeks and became the "mole" in my partial molar pregnancy. Such things I did not know existed. I was told by a neonatologist around my third month that I had "a healthy baby growing in there". It wasn't until early in my sixth month that every maternal hope I had was dashed.

I am always processing this loss. Once a mother, always a mother. I know my baby boy lives on in me, as does he or she that left so, so soon. It was all ended way too soon. Mothers, hold your children close. Squeeze them an extra squeeze for me this weekend. I  know Gabriel would want it that way. Blessings to all on this coming Mother's Day.