9 Years Missing Him

Joshua,

It has been almost a decade since you were with me.

They told me it would get easier, and it does.

I have written and spoken about you countless times. I have told how I pushed you out through fear; how I held you cold and still. I have shared the treasure of stroking your silken brow. I have wept with mothers in their grief and tried to speak encouragement to them as others did to me.

But there is something that is just ours – that will never be anything other than private and sacred no matter how much I speak or write about losing you. That is the experience – the reality of everything I cannot put into words. The simple joy of carrying you those nine months, the way my chest ripped open with sobs, the way we carried on and found our footing again. What is sacred is that you and I and your father were in that room together where you were born and mourned. What is sacred is how the light sparkled in your ashes and ocean water, and that we really lived those moments together.

So I don’t know how to write a blog post because it feels like just a shadow of everything you are.

They told me it gets easier, and it does in the same way that you learn to live with any wound, any part of life that you wish was different but has come to be.

Maybe it is also easier because I am a decade closer to you. Closer to all the wounds being healed and the story being revealed. You are why I remember that in a world where bodies break we are spirit and soul.

One day you and I will run my son. Further up and further in.

Until then I will try to live worthy of being your mother – and walk in grace. Always grace.