Everyone else has gone to bed.
A boy and his mother sit
at the table in the house
they are renting for a few
more days. They are familiar
the way my eyes are familiar.
He sees a large cockroach
climbing the wall, and when
his mom squeals, he gets up,
grabs it, throws it to the ground
with youthful efficiency,
then smiles at his mother,
a tender smile that says,
I like taking care of you, mom.
But the boy is not happy.
Soon he is crying. His eyes
are empty, colorless, black.
Then it is only the mother
sitting at the table, her
empty hands full of fear,
uncertainty, lack. Why
do I return to this moment,
knowing I cannot change
what happens the next day?
The closet. The gun. The choice.
I go back to slip my hands beneath
the mother’s empty hands,
making for them a nest,
then sneak up the stairs to the boy
in his room in his bed in his pain,
and though I know it will not change
a thing, I whisper in his ear,
there is nothing you can do
that will keep me from loving you.
Posts Tagged ‘son’
Five Years Ago
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, grief, mother, past, son, suicide on August 13, 2026| 28 Comments »
Close Encounters
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bunny, grace, grief, rabbit, son on July 1, 2025| 18 Comments »
It was a little mangy, to be honest,
the rabbit in the forest that came close to me—
close enough I could see the way sunlight
made his long ears glow pink. Close enough
for me to coo and praise his remarkably long rabbit feet,
praise the white socks of his fur,
praise the bright brown of his eyes.
Even his patchy, uneven molting couldn’t stop me
from falling in love with the way he leapt
from fallen trunks into patches of bluebells.
We were all staring at him, all six of us,
wondering why he would come so close,
but I took his appearance personally—
like when we read a fortune cookie fortune
and believe there was a bit of our destiny in it.
I cannot see a bunny without believing it’s my son.
I know. It isn’t my son. I also know it is.
Every bunny reminds me he was here.
Every bunny is a chance to push past
my rational mind and fling open the doors
of love. Every bunny, especially this one who
comes so close, seems to say, Sweetheart,
don’t you believe in grace? And as the bunny
leaps from log to duff, I think, I do, I do, I do.
Out of the Corner of My Eye
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, grief, mother, presence, river, son on May 8, 2025| 10 Comments »
Sometimes I expect to see him walking by the river,
to see his tall, thin body move through the willows,
camera in hand. I don’t see him, of course, but I do,
I see him as a young man in a blue button-up shirt,
his hair cut short, his movements doe-like as he
picks his way through the rocks. And sometimes
I see him a young boy, still blonde, still shrieking
with joy at the splash he can make with a big river rock.
And sometimes I see him as the willows themselves,
as if he’s come back in everything—the willows,
the river, the stones, the trees, this woman
who is standing at the window, looking.
Letter to My Son, Over Three Years Since He’s Gone
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, grief, love, memory, mother, siblings, son on March 5, 2025| 9 Comments »
You would be jealous, I think,
of how your sister is learning trig,
speaking Spanish, playing bridge.
You’d probably tease her, but really,
what you’d be thinking is, She is so cool.
And she is, sweetheart. She’s fun
and silly. Like you. Only like her.
We talk about you, of course.
Just this weekend, we remembered
how once you said if a 99-pound person
ate a one-pound burger, they
would be one percent burger.
I wonder what percent of your sister
is grief? And what percentage love?
Tonight a girl asked her if she had any siblings.
She said, yes, a brother. When the girl
asked her how old you were, she told her
the truth. That you were seventeen
when you died. What a terrible gift
to learn how to say the hardest things straight.
I can’t help but think if you are watching her,
you, too, must be in awe of who she’s becoming.
Oh, how we learn to grow from whatever soil
we’ve been given. I do not pretend to know
how this works. I only know she
is learning to transform ache into beauty,
nightmare into dream. I only know
I long for her to know love from you
the way a garden feels loved by sun, by rain.
Mother and Son
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, grief, love, mother, son on June 5, 2024| 9 Comments »
Briefly, you were taller than I,
tall enough that when we hugged
my head rested against your chest,
your body lean from growing
so fast. My body remembers
how new it felt when you
gathered me in long, slender arms
the way I had once cradled you.
It is not the same to be held
by your absence, no warmth,
no scent. Still, I let myself
be held by what is here—
no heartbeat but my own,
but oh, the love still growing.
Getting Close
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dance, grief, love, mother, photograph, son, suicide on May 28, 2024| 15 Comments »
In the photo he is dancing,
his arms a strong diagonal,
his tie flying forward
even as he comes to a still point
balanced for a moment
on the toes of his tap shoes,
his body a lightning bolt
in a crisp white shirt.
I focus on his face,
see the will it takes
to make his body stop in time,
see his easy smile,
the invitation in his eyes,
a blend of pride and play.
I lean in until his face is a blur,
as if by coming closer,
I might feel the breath
that isn’t there, breathe in
the warmth of his being.
I love entering
this photo sometimes,
or more rightly,
love the way this photo
enters me until
I ring with the truth
of how it is to love
this boy who did not
become a man,
this boy who chose
to make his body
stop in time,
this lightning bolt
captured on film,
unpredictable, powerful,
something no one
could hold forever,
this love that strikes me
every time I think of him,
I still feel it, the charge.
Talking to My Son at Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, loss, mother, nothing, silence, son, stars on December 13, 2023| 9 Comments »
I miss you, I say to the stars,
The stars are not you,
but always they seem to listen,
as if what I have to say is important.
I miss you, I say again.
The stars never talk back.
Still, I listen for a response.
When I say I miss you,
I mean I’ve barely begun to understand
what missing you means.
Though I live it every day.
Though missing you infuses every breath.
Though missing you shapes me—
especially at night when I’m alone
and I find myself talking with stars.
I miss you, I say to the stars.
I hear nothing in response.
I let myself be cradled
by that nothing.
The Swirl
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, dream, grief, son on August 13, 2023| 29 Comments »
We’re traveling together, you,
me, your father, your sister. And
we’re laughing. You’re talking
about your classes for college,
and you’re nervous about seeing
a girl again, and I have this bright feeling
that you’ve passed some threshold.
You’re a firecracker, wild with potential,
and I can’t understand this swirl of worry
that churns through me like smoke.
It’s only after you race down the concourse
showing off your speed,
arms pumping, legs a blur,
your body quick and slender verb,
it’s only then when you don’t come back
I remember you already made a choice to die,
and in the dream I wail, battered again
by the bludgeon of immediate loss.
When I wake, I’m still wearing
the sweet perfume of promise and hope,
even as tears slip hot to the sheets.
It’s not easy, today, to rise, to step
into this world of heartache and courage,
this world you left, this world I love.
The Mother Stands in the Doorway
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, death, door, doorway, grief, loss, mother, silence, son on November 28, 2022| 12 Comments »
Because you are gone,
I will never again stand
in your doorway and listen
to the sound of your breath
as you sleep.
I can remember the way
it used to calm me—
the slow, even rhythm
that proved you were alive.
I used to laugh at myself.
As if you wouldn’t be alive.
How farfetched it felt,
the idea of your death.
Now, I hear the absence
of your breath everywhere—
everywhere is a doorway
where I find you are not.
And so I listen.
Sometimes it seems as if a silence
is breathing me,
and somehow, you live in that silence.
I don’t know how it works.
I only know that since you are gone,
sometimes listening feels like communion.
Sometimes when I am very quiet,
when there is no sound at all,
I hear you say nothing.
It’s everything.
That Beautiful Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, beauty, boat, grief, memory, mother, origami, river, son on October 12, 2022| 7 Comments »
Memory of sitting by the river,
you taking my picture,
the leaves around us
already changing—
you were happy that day,
camera in hand,
no hint of sorrow,
no augury of grief.
Oh, that beautiful day.
I fold it in half,
run my finger down the crease,
unfold it, rotate it ninety degrees
and fold it in half again.
In six more steps,
I’ve folded it neatly into a boat.
Someday, perhaps,
I will float it down the river.
Today, I tuck it
into my mind’s back pocket.
When I need to, I touch it,
run my fingers along the folds.
It carries me along
the current.
Embracing the Mess
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clealiness, grief, memories, neatness, organization, son on October 10, 2022| 8 Comments »
for my son
I didn’t know you used to straighten
the shelves at the toy store in town
until tonight, when my friend told me
you used to go there to play after school
while hanging out with your friends, and then,
to her shock, you’d put everything away.
No other kids ever did that, she said.
But that was your nature—
you who kept rows of mechanical pencils
in perfect lines on your desk.
You who ate one thing at a time on your plate.
Sometimes I pull out memories of you
and scatter them all over the house—
memory of smelling all the spices in the spice drawer,
memory of building pirate ships out of couches,
memory of playing Legos on the floor.
Setting up the drum set in the doorway.
Playing chase to Krishna Das before bed.
They’re everywhere, these memories.
I don’t even try to stack them away
in the closet, color coded, neatly folded,
though that is in my nature, too.
I like it best when the memories are everywhere—
and I stumble over the ghosts of wooden train tracks,
trip on the spot where you used to do push-ups,
fall all over the memory of your ski gear, neatly laid out,
and there, on the piano, I remember it well,
your music spread out next to mine.
*
On the Day We Remember My Son
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, joke, memorial, mother, son on August 6, 2022| 15 Comments »
After hours of weeping and laughing
and hearing stories that make me fall
even more deeply in love with my boy,
after flower bouquets and tear-stained words
and full body hugs and cello and viola and Country Roads
and leaning deeply into grief and grace,
I sit alone in my car and discover
with a quick glance at my phone
someone has given my address
to internationalcupid.com,
and in the last few hours of heartbreak
and breaking wide open, I have amassed
dozens of likes and letters of nascent love
from people around the world.
And part of me is annoyed and part of me
thinks my son must have coordinated this prank
from beyond the veil, perhaps
as retribution for me coordinating a sing along
at his memorial. I can hear him.
Mom, you’re embarrassing me. Mom.
Really? Mom. What are you doing?
Mom, stop right now or else … or else …
But I can’t regret I shared the song
I wrote for him before he was born,
shared the song I sang to him
when first they laid him on my chest,
shared the song I sang him almost
every night of his life, shared the song
I sang to his body before they rolled it away.
And the hundreds of people who gathered today,
they sang it back, true and full of love.
It was worth it, Finn. It was worth it
to hear the air ring with your song.
Could you hear it? I think so,
based on the quick retribution. I’m not sorry.
You are the song I’m still listening for,
the song I’m still learning to sing.
You are the song I will continue to share,
the song I can’t help but singing along.
Grateful for Those Years
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, holding, missing, son, touch on August 4, 2022| 13 Comments »
Tonight it’s his willowy body I miss,
the way it fit so easily into my arms,
the way he’d find me on the couch
and slip in beside me and loan me
for a time the full weight of his loneliness.
I miss how sometimes we’d say nothing
and let the quiet crests of our breath
be the only thing that need be said.
I miss how sometimes we’d talk for hours,
our thoughts unspooling like ink-dark yarn.
I miss nuzzling my face in his hair.
I miss being with him everywhere—
in the kitchen, in the car, in the yard,
on a plane, in town, on the pond,
in the store, by his desk. But most of all,
tonight, I miss him in my arms,
here in my too empty arms,
this place where so many years I held him,
this place where the memory of his beauty
still leans full weight against my chest.
The Unheard
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, grief, loss, love, mother, son on July 27, 2022| 6 Comments »
I do not hear his shrieks of laughter
escaping from his room.
I don’t hear his hand beating time against the table.
I don’t hear the luff of his breath
as I stand beside him while he sleeps.
I don’t hear the fear in his voice
when he begs me, please mom, please.
I hear the rain on the rooftop,
a morse code of love I don’t know how to translate
except in shades of green.
I hear cars on the highway,
and remember life is moving.
I hear the whir of the hummingbird wings
and the black notes of crows
and the silence where the boy
no longer grows.
If you ask me do I hear his voice,
I would tell you no.
But that is only partly true.
I do not hear his voice in words.
I don’t hear it the way perhaps I wish to.
But I hear him inside me, not a whisper,
but a voice that sounds startlingly like my own,
a voice that sounds like rain on the roof,
like cars on the highway, like hummingbird wings,
like crows, like the silence
where my love for the boy still grows.
Before the Burial
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, gratitude, grief, home, loss, mother, self-talk, son on June 14, 2022| 13 Comments »
Because I can, I carry the box with your ashes
around the house as if you’re a baby on my hip.
I point out things and explain them,
just as I did when you were young and alive.
There, I say, there is where you practiced piano.
Here, I say, is where you sat at the counter
and wept when I told you the story
of Cinderella. And here is the wall
where we hung all your artwork.
And here is the room where you slept.
Here’s the plant you gave me last year—
see how it’s doubled in size?
And here’s the new couch in the place
where the old couch once was,
the one on which we snuggled each morning
before school. I walk the floor as I did
when you were young and fussy and needed
touch and movement to calm you.
Now I am the one who is calmed by the walking.
So familiar, these steps around the kitchen island,
these steps around the table.
So familiar, this weight on my hip.
Soon we will place this small wooden box
in the ground, so while I still can, I carry you.
Oh sweetheart, how is it I’m thriving amidst this gravity?
It is, I am sure, because I, too, am deeply companioned,
carried from moment to moment, from space to space.
And though I don’t hear it, there is perhaps a voice
that says to me, Here is where you lit
a candle every day. Here is where you practiced
to love in new ways. And here is where
you did not judge yourself as you wept.
Here is the place where you did nothing but breathe.
And here is where you thought of all the people
who have carried you.
And here is where you said thank you.
On Pi Day, I Remember Baking Pies with My Son
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged baking, constant, love, math, mother, pi, pie, son on March 14, 2022| 4 Comments »
3.14.22
Tonight, instead of serving pie,
I serve the memory of pie—
serve the memory of pumpkins
we grew in the garden
then processed into custard.
Serve the memory of years
we made gluten-free crusts.
Serve the memory of your rhubarb plant
that will rise more robust this spring,
memory of thinly sliced apples,
key limes, lemon merengue,
and all those tart cherries
we harvested together.
I serve the joy we shared
in celebrating a constant
necessary to the geometry of the world.
I serve the thrill in knowing
there is something
both transcendental and infinite,
something death can never touch,
something ubiquitous that defines
the world we inhabit.
And though it is math,
it is no less love,
something that helps us
understand our universe,
something that hints
at the grand design
that amidst great catastrophe
continues to hold it all together.
The Softening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, grief, mother, softening, son on February 21, 2022| 9 Comments »
I carry it with me now, everywhere I go,
this softness, this limp unstuffed toy, a puppy
with a thin square body made for snuggling.
I carry it in my purse where it mingles
with my wallet, my glasses, my lipstick,
my loss. When I’m walking, I reach in
and let my fingers rub its soft, worn fleece.
When I’m watching a movie, once it’s dark,
I pull it out and let Skinny Puppy settle in my lap,
as if its brown embroidered eyes could see.
I know it’s just an object, but it’s a well-loved object,
some small proof that my boy was here,
that he loved, loved hard, loved long.
I remember how he carried Skinny to school,
clutching the small brown scrap to his belly
when we would say goodbye. I remember
how long after the toy trains and model tractors
and even the complicated Legos had gone away,
Skinny still slept on his pillow.
It’s been worn down by love, this old friend,
and made even softer by the loving—
like me, an old woman who has become
frayed, sentimental, slightly tattered,
distressed, but so shaped by love, and softened,
yes, softened. Even more myself, only softer.
I Bless Every Yes I Said
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged car, grief, loss, mother, son, yes on January 20, 2022| 13 Comments »
There were nights when my son
would come to me late, like midnight,
and say, Mom, come on, let’s go drive.
And though I was tired, and though I knew
the canyon roads would make my stomach turn,
I’d say yes, because I was glad he’d ask,
and we’d get in the Ford and I’d feel the thrill
as it flooded him each time he’d sit at the wheel.
The night was our cathedral.
And we’d talk, or we wouldn’t, and he’d drive
us up to the top of the Dallas Divide.
I’d feel like heaving my guts every time. But damn,
how I loved those nights. The hymn of the wheels.
His smile. His laugh. The quiet canticle of breath.
No matter what choices came later,
I have those times he steered toward joy,
Those nights when we were so alive
and we’d drive, just drive.
In Those Quiet Hours
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mother, night, reframe, sleep, son on December 29, 2021| 26 Comments »
For two weeks after he died,
I’d fall asleep exhausted
only to wake just past midnight.
Desperate, I’d claw at sleep,
frantic to catch it and clutch it,
but always it slipped my grasp
and I’d lie awake till morning.
My friend suggested
I reframe those sleepless hours
as a sacred time, an intimate,
personal quiet time. Not a problem.
Not something to be treated.
Not something to be feared.
That night, as I emerged from sleep,
dreams dripping from me like water,
I did not resist the waking.
Instead, eyes closed, heart open,
still lying in bed, I said,
I love you, Finn. I miss you, sweetheart.
And woke on the shore of morning.
Ever since, it happens just like this—
when I slip from sleep,
I tell my son I love him
and slide unknowingly
back into the tide of dreams.
How many hundreds of times
when he was young, did I go to him
when he cried out in the night?
I’d press my palms against his chest
until his breath was a skiff for dreams.
Years later, though I can’t feel his hands,
though I don’t hear the lullaby of his breath,
somehow he arrives to comfort me.
And though I don’t hear him say
the words I’d always say to him,
I feel them float above me like a blanket,
warm in the cool night air—
Shhh. I’m here. It’s okay. I’m here.
Looking at the Photo from Twelve Years Ago
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, love, mother, photo, son on December 15, 2021| 8 Comments »
Tonight I stare at the photo
of you and me and the cat
and the wooden train tracks
and I can’t stop marveling how
your head angles so neatly
into my shoulder, how my
body angles so easily into
yours. And I see how, even
now, after you’re gone,
I am still angling toward you,
my whole self somehow
defined by the space
where you’ve been. Today,
someone asked if it
was too hard to think
of the happy memories.
No. I love them. And I love,
impossibly, the hardest
of memories, too. It is
so easy now to love
the all of you. Remember
how many times we built
those wooden tracks?
And then pulled them apart,
only to build them again?
What isn’t a teacher for love?
Even then we were learning
about dead ends. Even then
we were learning how things
circle, how things change.