PART II)
She sat in a room. Staring. A room she’d never seen before that day, in part of a house that belonged to the man who’d been appointed to be her son. A room that was now her home. She stared. She stared at walls. At dust. At the blankets pulled up to her shoulders. Her head pulsated with blurry movement. It hurt. Everything hurt. But pain felt good. Pain made sense. The weight of her lids pulled down on her eyes; anger kept them open. Where was HE? How could HE have let this happen? All those years she spent alone. Everything she carried. Everything she lost. Everything was paralyzed. Pain seared up her throat when she tried to swallow. Dry. Dry. Dry. No tears left, her body heaved. She hadn’t slept in two days. She couldn’t sleep without closing her eyes. And she couldn’t close her eyes without seeing him there. Not his round face as a newborn, or the concerned expression of the little boy who slept near her bed every night so he could wake her from her nightmares, but the face of the animal they made him before he died. They took everything from her. EVERYTHING. Even her instincts. She hadn’t recognized her own son. She looked right past him. Discounted him like all the people around her. She should’ve known. So all she could do was follow him after that. Every step she took with him. She stood tall for him, but from a distance. She wasn’t allowed near. But where was HE? How could HE have let this happen? HE who could’ve done something. HE who could have stopped it. And where was everyone else? Where were all the people He healed? All the people whose lives he changed? Why did she feel like the only one there? And why was the last thing he did before he died, for her? Her. Not himself. Why? It was so perfectly planned out, as though he knew all of this would happen to him. Getting her out of her house. Away from her family for good. And into the home of a man who would take care of her. A new family that believed. Believed her. A family that wouldn’t judge her, and would take care of her, and comfort her when she was ready. Why couldn’t he have just left her alone in a shell of herself where she belonged? Why did he have to take that extra step? HE had left him…and so had she. Her son had suffered alone. She should have known it was him. She should’ve done something. She should have found a way to save him. She was tired of being so weak. Tired of how much it hurt. Tired of knowing that this was her life now. Tired because she couldn’t say she was sorry and that she loved him. And so tired of being awake…
A JOURNEY’S END (PART III)
…she sensed the light and the cool air. The low chatter of voices in the next room. She wanted to stay in her dream. She breathed deeply, squeezed her lids shut, and lay perfectly still. She never moved in her sleep. When he was a baby she slept with him right next to her because she needed to know she could reach him and hide him should anyone come to her house.
Her nightmares started when he was two, and every night were the same. Her husband would wake her because of another dream he had. Another angel warning them to flee to another country. And then the shrieks would start. They would escape on an impossibly slow-moving animal with a child who preferred to walk. She could hear the feet of the soldiers right behind them. He would struggle to get down off of the animal; she would hold him as tightly as she could. But he would always slip out of her grasp and run away. And the soldiers would reach him before she did.
Every night she’d wake crying, but even that she did quietly. Not because she feared waking her husband, but because she feared everything else. And when she’d open her eyes, her son was always there, watching her and smiling. Many nights she’d wake from her dreams to the soft touch of his hand on her face, coaxing her out of her sleep. She thought about the many years he’d slept by her bed, and the nights he kept vigil from another part of the house because he was too old to sleep next to her. Where he was as she slept didn’t matter, because when she woke crying, he was there. Always smiling. Always letting her see that he was fine. And she’d fall back to sleep.
Unlike now.
Her dream was gone. She closed her eyes and pulled the blankets up around her shoulders and started to cry. And it all came out. Tears, sobs, rages, pounding, screams. She cried for so long she fell back to sleep. She must have. Because she felt his hand on her face. No longer the hand of a little boy, though it was still warm and coaxed her to breathe. She smiled in her sleep. Felt the light on her face again. She breathed deeply; her body shuddered with remnants of broken sobs.
She remembered his little face. How concerned he was when she cried in her sleep. And…no. It was time to stop, at least for the day. She let go of her dream, and felt it slip away, leaving behind her life. He was gone and she’d get up. She'd make it through the day. She'd face her new family and the excited chatter that rose and fell in the other room.
She felt the familiar hand on her face again. She opened her eyes.
There he was, smiling at her. Sitting on the floor right next to her new bed, as if he’d just been waiting for her to wake up. She reached out and felt his hands, his shoulders and the soft skin of his perfectly healed face. She started to laugh and her laughter mixed with sobs. He wrapped her in his arms and rocked her. She breathed him in. She breathed in her son.
She praised God through her tears. A God so much bigger than she ever imagined or understood. A God who changed her life again and again and again.
Her son was alive. He. Was. Alive.
Photo courtesy of Grace Brown
Cindy Kane is a graduate of the Writing for Film and Television program of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Her first book, Bad Mommy Moments: Celebrating the Days of New Motherhood that SUCK, is a mixed-media trip through the two-year storm of new motherhood, and is available from all major outlets.
Cindy currently blogs atbadmommymoments.com and performs her stories with SpeakeasyDC (speakeasydc.org).
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