More of Mother's Day...

This is what William's ashes came in. We kept them close to us, in our room - because that's where he would be right now, if he were alive, sleeping with us every night. His ashes are barely enough to fill the corner of a plastic bag. It's a huge container for the amount it holds.Then again... I don't know if any box could possibly contain what that one really holds - which is all that's left of our dreams, our hopes, our future for our son.

Over the past month, we've created a sort makeshift memorial on top of the box his ashes came in. M. put the knife he would have cut William's cord with on it. I added my birthing statue, and the kids chose a shell. I love the shell because the top of it reminds me of the top of William's head, the sweet whorls of his hair...

And several people gave us "angels" as gifts.

M. ordered a beautiful urn for his ashes, and a gorgeous cedar box to place his other keepsakes in.

The velvet heart box opens to display the urn.

Although we will probably keep it in the box, along with his other things, like the knife, and the bracelets we made and wore, intending to cut them off when he was born and his cord was cut. They're here, still whole.

To give you an idea of how small this urn is, how little of my sweet William there is left in the world - those are my daughter's hands holding him. She's seven.

 

We bought matching urns for each set of grandparents to put a bit of William's ashes in.

M. is going to order a tag and chain to hang around them with William's name and birthdate.

Today, we went to give these to each set of grandparents. 

William's ashes joined my father's in my mother's livingroom. 

I thought there couldn't possibly be a more horrible feeling in the world than seeing my live child holding the body of my dead one. But I was wrong. Seeing her holding his ashes was worse.

 

But I can think of worse things I could have been doing on Mother's Day.  It's true. Thanks to the death of my son, I can imagine a lot of worse things in the world. 

M. said to me this morning, "Well, you've experienced more of motherhood than any mother should have." Maybe so. But while the "happy" in my Mother's Day was relative today... I think it always was. I just didn't know or understand it in the same way I do now. Now that I've experienced more of motherhood than I ever should have...

 

We passed an accident driving to the grandparents' today, and M. and the children were annoyed by the delay, but all I kept thinking was, "It could be worse. That could be us." And I hid my tears as we passed the wreckage, knowing on a visceral level now in a way I never had before, just how much worse it could get on Mother's Day, or any other day.

 

The day William died, the heart of the world cracked open, and I saw its beating red pulse. It opened me up to all the pain in the world, the ache of potential loss of everything in every moment. It also opened me up to all the love there, too, just as vast and infinite and beyond comprehension. 

 

Thank you, William.

I love you.

My Gift

This was my Mother's Day gift from my husband. 

But my real gift, 

my secret gift, 

was his broken heart 

beating today with mine 

and our children 

breathing in their beds. 

* * *

the promise of morning
by M.

mothers are carved out of stone, cleaved
and grieving from the earth; their children, too

winter statues frosted and alive

alive and cold angel food iced with tears of a knowing

that is toward winter and toward those other lengths of last breaths: 

cut flowers and June bugs such brief kisses;  Indian 
Summers and cider pressed fresh; April snowmen 
and a boy named William whose eyes never opened -- 

and how can they be gone, never here,
and how can they be, how.

the world will die, placid and cooling, under a dying sun,

and be still, as it had been still before its birth,

as it had been still before the primordial conflagatory urge: 

the dawn pushes out the sun, awed and yawning, 
through the red fire horizon edge of earth;

and what mourning would there be if he slid out inert, 
all gasses unexcited and quiet, and floated to his place, still, 
in the dark sky, the warmth of her earthen womb dissipating 
as his heavenly body returned to the wild homeostatic forever -- 

even the sun will die, and her earth with him,

and each morning she gives him birth

she will take his ashes in her hands --

            “this is how you were born,
            and I have outlived you from the beginning.”