You were so little once. Born into this world bruised by the fight to get you here. Ten pounds and six ounces, fighting weight for a baby. But you were still so small to us. That sweet little face and that mop of black hair. What a thing. Me and you lying in bed, your little body, soft and warm and round, nursing from my breast. Life to life. For all of life. My life for yours. My life for yours. I would give to you my last sip of oxygen. My blood into your body. My life for yours.
That blood no longer flows from me to you. No need. It just gushes now, spilled in a pool at my feet. There’s no stopping it and it gives no life.
What flows now? Do you flow? Your energy? What is energy anyway? What good is it to us living on this physical plane? I feel so stunted and inadequate. All I want is to hold you and there is nothing here to hold. What then? When I see you next, can we hug? Or is it just a gaseous, swirling of energies dancing and flitting about? That doesn’t seem so great from my perspective here and now. What good is it? And why can’t I know? What would be so wrong with being born into this world and knowing that when we die, there is something profoundly beautiful waiting? Why not? Would it make us any worse? Would it be so bad for a grieving mother to know that she will one day hold her beautiful little girl again? Is that so bad?
Faith. Do we just say “faith” every time we can’t answer a question?
And yet, in some moments, in some times, I know we will see each other again - whatever that “see” looks like. Or maybe it’s that the pain gets so excruciating that my mind won’t let me entertain any other possibility. Does “knowing” come from the rejection of my deepest and darkest of fears - that this is all there is. We are born animals, we live, we die, our bodies become the fodder that feeds the circle of life and, that’s that? The rest is all flourishes and filigree from religions and hopeful wishes.
That can’t be right. If that’s right, what I have seen and come to know is all wrong. The ash covered bluebird in our fireplace, an aberration. You are alive somewhere in some way my peon brain cannot comprehend. Please come to me, Mila. Please be patient with me as I learn how to connect with you. Please help to teach me, if you can. You don’t need a mommy anymore, this I know, but I am still a mother and it remains my life’s greatest honour to have been, to forever remain. My babies, each of you, so loved. I am such a deeply flawed human being, but I have tried. I will continue to try. I have come far from where I was but I have so much further to go. Be with me, please. I remain here, on this physical plane, a mother and a wife and a woman that came out of a little girl who had much pain. You, too, I see. Please let me continue to love you like a daughter. Please let me understand how to love you and honour your life.
You were such a light to me. I remember, and often find myself continuing to draw upon the memory, of watching you in your last year of hockey. There you were, playing with the boys, men really, and you kept up, stopped them, fought back. But it was when the action stopped and you stood still for just a moment, standing in that same way you did when you were wee, chin tucked down, back arched, this vulnerable, soft stance. It never lasted long, you’d quickly crouch down and ready yourself for battle again, but when you stood like that, all I could see was little Mila. Little Mila, quietly watching, patiently waiting. You were still in there somehow. That little Mila carried around in big Mila’s frame.
Little Mila didn’t die, but she was seemingly gone for many years. I missed her even when you were here just as I missed the small versions of your grown sisters. Where do all the littles go? They get all wrapped up, carried around inside stretched bodies, just a form change. How many lives and deaths do we live in a lifetime? And when we are done with tour bodies, do we move on with all of our reiterations? Are we little and big and everything in between? Am I with you playing with your hair on the couch and singing your little body a lullaby and reading you a children’s book and cheering you on in hockey and holding your big hands and your little chubby hands all in one moment and am I with you, in the moment of your death, surrounded by the warm light of God’s radiating sun, letting go of you as the angels of love and mercy gently lift you home? Can I be there, too?
Do I speak nonsense?
Come tell me.
I think it’s truth.
Come tell me where you are. Come tell me you can feel all our love. All the love. All the love ever felt by every being since the dawn of time. Can you feel that? Is that nothing compared to the love of the God and heavens around you?
I hope so. But I also hope ours still counts.
Stay close if you can.
I love you beyond measure.
Mama Bear.
Perfect ❤️💔❤️
I have something to say here. It will probably not convey the way I plan it. I cried yesterday for your loss. It’s something new to me, to cry for someone I do not know. I have two teenage girls. That’s the common thread. My Nadia and Mila are similar, I think, animals and the outdoors. Your writing is helping me pause. You have a way…before yesterday that drew me in. Know that through your healing, I am learning, slowing down and trying to see the little things. Just thank you.