Dear Mila,
Where are you today? I’m here, sitting at my desk, looking mindlessly at vintage photographs on the internet - needing or wanting none of it. I was just thinking about how lovely it would be to spontaneously pick up the phone and call you. Maybe ask you over for supper. I will make deep dish pizza, just how you like it. We can play a board game after - your choice. Yes?
I spent the morning setting up electric fencing for the two new calves big foray into the orchard. They were so overjoyed to be out there. What athletes! Did you see them? I asked you to come watch them with me. We laughed at them together, I’m sure of it. Then, of course, not to be outdone, your sweet ginger cat, Fidel, burst through the woods and leapt into the air, closing both front paws around the bug he was trying to catch. I think it was a moth. I could hear you commenting on his hunting skills. “Little Fidel, what a hunter”.
We named the calves Greta and Honey, but I suppose you would already know that.
I was thinking, this morning while I was doing chores, about how heavy I am now. So loaded down with this melancholy that frosts the grief that decorates the leaden cake of sadness. Layer upon layer upon layer. I was trying to observe that sadness when I was watching the calves sprint maniacally across the grass, leaping and prancing and so darn bursting with excitement. How is it that I can be still enough to allow their happiness in and yet be overflowing with grief? Does my body vacillate so quickly between the two states that it’s imperceptible to me or can my heart be nothing but dusty rubble and still, somehow, allow in beauty? How? How can that possibly be?
I don’t know, but I do know that you had that ability, too. Something else we share.
I think it comes down to this - I simply cannot be without you. I just can’t. And if I can’t live a life void of my beautiful girl, well then I have to find her, don’t I? I have to pull her in and keep her close and the only way I know how to do that is to look for you in the miracle of life all around me. It’s to see you and feel you in the warmth and the light and the wonder. If I don’t make space and slow down enough to meet you in all of Creation, I am immobilized with the wrenching ache of your absence. And, still, even when I feel you near, I want more. I want to smell you and touch you and have your beautiful, exotic eyes meet mine. You looking at me and me looking at you. Real and hard and imperfect and moving.
But I don’t have that. I will never have that again while I am on this physical plane in this physical journey. Maybe, sort of, if you would visit me in my dreams, but you don’t. How come? Why not? I know about that hug we had, that long, warm, filling hug. I knew in my dream that would be our last, but I changed my mind. Come back to me. Tell me your secrets. Tell me what it’s like where you are. Tell me you are as close as we need you to be and it’s good for you, too. Could you? I want to hear all about it.
I bought books for your friends - your favourites (or at least ones you quite liked). Tell me, please, which goes to whom. I need to know.
Oh what I would give to reverse time. My baby. My beautiful, beautiful girl with a heart so luscious - so big and wondrous. I miss you. Forgive me for not rising beyond my own failings for you. You deserved better. You deserved perfect. So much you had for this world. I’m sure of it. Am I wrong? Was it just how it was supposed to be?
Do my questions hurt you? I hope not. I don’t know who else to ask.
I am and will forever remain your ever-loving mama, loyal and dedicated to my last breath and then, hopefully, for all eternity in a grand heaven meet-up. You are my beauty. I will never stop looking for you.
Everywhere and always, your mama bear.