And we weep

When a child dies, mother continues to hold her babe. Just as mother orca cradles her dead calf, holding her little one in the waterline. And, even though, after days passing, mother surrenders the physical body of her child, allowing them to float gently into the depths and darkness of the ocean, mother holds her child still. Counting birthdays as what could have been. Five months, six. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three.

When a child dies, a community falls to their knees. Our hearts too heavy to hold as the news of their passing is told. And we weep. Bewildered by how it could come to be. The death of a child stopping the noise of the mundane, we line the streets to honour them. Light a candle in our doorstep. Reach out with food and tea. The comfort of others like a small animal lost in the woods. The grief a heavy fog dampening our cheeks.

When a child dies, mother’s words in her throat become lost. The movement in her bones, heavy. The emptiness of space, closer. Numbness encases her. Time disappears. She no longer knows peace. It waits for her. At a respectable distance. Acknowledging her grief. Hysteria steps in. Her womb leaving her body and wrapping around her as she wails. Holding her in ways nothing else can. Until it too releases mother into the depths and darkness of an ocean. Carrying her in waves. 

When a child dies the colours of the world both fade and become too strong for our eyes to endure. And so we close them. We watch the world through our hearts, cracked open and raw. The inaugural facing daylight of the depth of our love, marking the beginning of something we will cradle in the waterline beyond what time can contain.

The scent of a child’s clothes never fades for mother. Even those never worn or bought. The redolence carries her, with music and photographs, to where her child rests, forevermore. 

When a child dies. 

For Ramone, Norma, Linda, Christine and all mothers carrying their babes in the waterline