This post is for Amy and Denise and Laurie and Jane and for my mother.

Lately I have been rocked by the return of the kind of savage grief I thought I left behind in my wildly emotive and medication-less youth — the kind of grief that kicks you in the stomach, leaves you blind with pain, slaps shut your mouth and your mind.

Over the past year or so, several good friends have experienced the loss of a son.  Not a baby, which is unforgiving in its own way, but of a fully grown adult.  For me, the mother of a deeply beloved son, the shock of a new reality without one’s child is like staring into the sun.  Unimaginable.

The Unimaginable Grief, imagined

There was me

before there was you.

But always

there was the leaving –

first you breathed in

me

and then out,

the breast and then the weaning.

You walked

and then away

out of the dailyness of our lives

to your own life

not here.

But always

here

under my heart

which beat for you

and

my lungs

when I breathed for you

but

when you no longer breathe,

then

what is my heart beating for?