You ever get a song in your head and can’t think of the name of it, even though you’re able to sing the verses like clockwork? Or, you try to remember the way back to a familiar place. You know the road. Driven it a thousand times. But, one day you just can’t find it on a map. You remember the candy apple red Ford Fairlane convertible. You see the dust kicking up over its fenders and the top is down. You pop the clutch into fifth gear and the sun takes over. But, no matter how long and hard you squint, you just can’t place the exact summer you felt the freedom of such a whipping wind.
Memory is a funny thing. It can sling you around the moon.
One of the very first images in my mind's eye is a summer day in July 1969. I look down at my childlike self, stretched out on the thin carpet of my grandparent’s living room. The television set is spitting out short radio bursts. Black and white, grainy images flicker and roll across the screen. The rocket launch looks exactly the same as the Saturn V model that Poppa is putting together on the floor. I think I remember him saying, “That’s gonna fly men to the moon, Janet.” But I will never be sure if it’s something he actually said or simply what my brain has constructed as story.
It’s like that car ride.
It’s like the name of that damn song.
Now, when I need the details the most, memory fades. Grief does that to you. It leaves you whimpering in bed under the moonlight, begging the cosmos for a photograph. The one you lost. The one you can’t quite grab onto anymore. The details of a painting you forgot. Any recollection that makes the edges come into focus, the way that old 60’s television screen stops rolling when you move the antenna around. You find the sweet spot. Suddenly, it’s all clear.
“I remember everything.”
That’s one of the last things my son said to me.
I try to gather him up. Grasp onto every little moment that he walked the earth with me. Strolls on beaches. Identifying creatures of the tides and pocketing agates that glistened in the sun like pearls. Hours exploring thickets and sharing names of trees. His little fingers gingerly tracing veins on the backs of leaves. His tenderness, petting field flowers. Jubilation flowing as he chased butterflies and lightning bugs.
He remembered it all. Now, I ache to find colors to paint those moments pristine. To be able to fill in all the light and dark and mystery. Find a constellation he loved and wait. Wait for the moment that I can fly and hold him again. Because I can still feel him, even as I wait.
I am a mother. And I have lost all my sons.
The first child I lost was conceived in violence. He didn’t live long enough for me to hold him in my arms. Even though I was a young girl, I wondered what color his eyes might have been. Blue as a bird egg? Green like the hillside in spring? A golden swirl of brown, deeply moving? Would he have a square jaw, a cowlick at his temple, right side? Might he have grown tall and lean, strong-bodied, and strong-willed, yet grounded in an open heart? For decades, I dreamed of him. I saw my son in a field of Appalachian wildflowers, barely big enough to peer over the blossoms that engulfed him. He danced among the asters, black-eyed Susans, clusters of white bloodroot, and miles of bluebells. I watched him tickle his chin with a handful of buttercups. Surrounded by the Great Smoky Mountains, with a quick summer thunderstorm on the lip of the horizon, he was perfectly happy to run towards the coming rain. I followed his towhead bouncing along an unknown path, wee hands outstretched and grasping for something I couldn’t quite see.
The second child I lost was born through my mother’s womb. He lived long enough for me to hold him 37 years. I was 14 when he was born, and I mothered my brother into adulthood. When I close my eyes, I see him on a baseball field. A little boy that had not yet grown out of his pudgy belly, draped over his beltline. Not quite a child and not yet into puberty, he still clung to me. In my memory, he comes around the fence that protected fans from a batter’s foul, carrying two gloves under one arm – cupping a baseball in the other, and trudging determinedly to where I sat. He never said a word. Just handed me a glove and turned back towards his team, trusting I was behind him. It was Father’s Day and his own was crippled from too many strokes. Every Little Leaguer on the field was warming up with a man who shared their bloodline. Wordless, my brother/son and I played catch. The snap and thud of the ball, resounding deep in a Rawlings mitt, was our only speech.
Sometimes, in dreams, he comes to me. Not that ten-year-old in a baseball uniform, but a grown man, bearded and tattooed. We sit in the nosebleed section. The crowd cheers after the crack of a bat sends the spun leather beyond the outfielder’s reach. I smell popcorn. Black licorice. Hot dogs smothered in mustard. Cotton candy on a stick. My brother/son and I tap the rim of our beer cups in celebration. He tells me a joke that I will not remember, but my dream self gets the clever quip. When his face begins to fade into the clouds, I try to grasp his outstretched hand, but he becomes a part of something I cannot quite see.
The third child I lost was born through the womb of a stranger. He didn’t live long enough. I held him the first time at 13 months. A month after his 24th birthday, a mad gunman robbed me of ever holding him again. I stretch out my hands as far as I can reach, but there is nothing to grab onto, nothing I can quite see.
What does grief sound like?
Does it echo across the drone miles of a late-night call? Does its tenor amp up a notch when you hear the words … Your brother didn’t make it. Does the fine silt sift through the ether of a text when you read the words of your partner … I don’t love you anymore. Does grief whine? Does it swish about? Does it clatter or clank? Is there a perpetual ringing in the atmosphere as your mother takes her last breath? And when a stranger lights up your phone with the news that a homicide has taken place, can grief shatter glass?
My sons are gone, and I am left in silence.
The thud of their loss reverberates inside four walls. It bounces off the ceiling and fills the room. I can hear the whirr of grief’s warning: don’t walk it alone. But, I am unable to give voice to the short life of my son. I am unable to name the violence of my childhood. I cannot call out to my brother/son except in dreams. I no longer hold the love line to my beloved. I murmur for my mother in the quiet of the night.
Mama, I’m so tired. Let me sleep.
I’m not the only one who feels this way. I see the numbers of citizens grow in a death column every day. I read the stories of so many families who have suffered the agony of being unable to say I love you but from the other side of a glass pane. The cutting to the bone of knowing their mother, father, partner, sibling, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or cousin died alone. How many have lost a soulmate? After this pandemic, how many will find themselves wondering after the boy who used to deliver the morning paper, their friendly butcher at the corner market, the taxi driver that knew the destination without asking? How many will return to their jobs to find a co-worker’s empty chair, listen in vain for the cleaning lady’s “Good morning!” greeting, or meet the bus driver’s replacement who doesn’t even look up when you drop a coin? How many students will learn they have a new teacher? How many teachers will find they have fewer students? How many graves are filled with sons?
How many?
Now more than ever, we are bound by blood.
When I was a little girl, all I wanted was to live in the woods. I ached for the stillness that I found among the trees. I lived for the quiet, the far away distance from cruelty. The sacredness of the mountains kept me alive. Now, it is only this expansive landscape, these Pacific Northwest forests, that can hold my grief. I share it while walking within the groves of hemlock, cedar, spruce, and noble firs. I carry the heaviness and lay it down at the trunks of broad-leaf madrones and bitter cherries. The noise of my torment swells over branches that stem from the white, papery, peeling bark of birches.
Here, I am reminded that the feeling of separateness is an illusion. The pulsing energy of life binds with all beings that thrive in the timbers, all the creatures that call this vastness home, all the vibrant fabrics of our world combined. I come to remember. My human burdens will swell again as I leave the solace of the mountains, but there are days when the woodlands linger in my heart. There are moments I take with me. Like when a great horned owl, perched on a low-lying branch, turned his head to stare at me and I felt the power of the mystic. When a hummingbird stopped her backwards flight, hovered briefly in my path, and I felt the resolve of her wings. These flashes of connectedness become intertwined with grief.
This duality, walking on a razor’s edge, is the most alive I will ever feel. How could it not? The jewels of life are embedded in the interstitial space between the squeezing muscles of the heart. Therein, lies the mystery. In the interval, everything that we love is stored. Here is the resting place of all we have ever lost. In the pause, created from the turbulence of valves snapping shut, is a placeholder for anguish.
If I dig deep enough, I can choose to listen. A resounding covenant, gleaned from my overly human heart, escapes from cavernous chambers. I hear its promise.
Oh, how I love you.
Oh, how I love.
For Nathaniel Mateo Acosta
February 16, 1996 - April 17, 2020
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