Love like Water

Most things break instead of transform because they resist. the quiet miracle of love is that without our interference, it, like water, accepts whatever is tossed or dropped or placed into it, embracing it completely.

Grief these days has felt like anxiety and depression. Thick, dark, paralyzing moments of  'I can't breathe.' Moments when it all collapses in on me and all I can think is that I made a huge mistake. About choosing to leave the house at 7 instead of 8. About choosing to bring home our puppy. About renting out our basement. About getting married. About Paris. About Paris. About Paris.

All these other things that paralyze me with intense fear, they aren't really the issue.

The issue is that I let them take my son from me and now he is dead. The issue is that my body failed him, and me. 

the element of love does not stop being elemental. it does not stop covering everything before it. and over a lifetime, the pain of withholding this great and quiet force is more damaging than the pain of being rejected or poorly loved.

I went to my doctor's office today for my 6 week follow up appointment. I remember at the time of Paris' death, 6 weeks felt like a lifetime away. I didn't know how I would survive it. And yet here I am, by some miracle, still standing 6 weeks later. 

Going into the office felt cruel. The last time I'd been there I'd been pregnant. the waiting room was filled with pregnant women with round, glowing bellies. the walls were covered in art featuring mothers and newborns in various ethereal, elegant poses. 

My stomach was already tight when I stumbled up to the reception desk to check in. 

"You're here for your prenatal! You must be so excited to be past the first trimester," She raved.

I could barely find the voice to tell her that we'd lost the baby. She apologized profusely but the entire time we were there I was counting down the seconds until I could get my medical clearance and walk out of this office. 

In truth, the more we let love flow through, the more we have to love. this is the inner glow of sages and saints of all ages seem to share: the wash of their love over everything before them; not just people, but birds and rocks and flowers and air.

They say 'lost the baby' like we don't know where he went. like he was here and then the next day he was gone, vanished into thin air. He was born and he died and we buried him in a tiny casket - smaller than any casket should have the right to be - with a family picture and a little blue blanket. There were daffodils at his funeral, and we laid him there in the ground and now he's there, in that unmarked hospital plot in Edmonton alongside other people's babies who have died in the cruelest possible way.

He is not a metaphor or a myth or a story. He is not symbolic or abstract or an idea. he is a baby, and he lived and then he died. he's not lost. he's just not here.

and I wish he was.

Beneath the many choices we make, love, like water, flows back into the world through us. it is the one great secret available to all. yet somewhere the misconception has been enshrined that to withhold love will stop hurt. in truth it is the other way around. as water soaks scars, love soothes our wounds. 

I've been returning to my yoga practice ever so slowly and when i'm there, in the stillness on my mat, I hear him. 

"Hi mama," he'll whisper to me, "I'm here, mama."

"I know, love," I'll say to him, "I see you."

on Sunday I went to yoga and at the end of the class we were guided in a beautiful nidra.

I was walking down a path, my puppy at my side. we approached a river. the teacher said, if we wanted, to offer something into the river and before I knew what I was doing I reached up and pulled the necklace from my neck, the one I wear every day with Paris' name on it. I was angry at what I had done in this meditative state. 

I continued along the journey, but IV stayed at the river with the necklace of Paris.

I walked until I approached a cabin. it was more like a cave really, but a cozy cave with furniture and a kitchen and a bathroom. 

Inside the cabin we were met by a guide. We were allowed to ask them anything and I began crying, asking this guide where Paris was. I wanted my baby. he should be here. 

she didn't say anything. She just handed me back my necklace, the one I'd thrown into the stream earlier. 

"He's here," She told me, putting the necklace on, "He's always been right here."

I felt a beam of light hit my chest in the same place where my necklace hung. 

My dog met me on the porch of the cabin. 

I felt peace.

If opened to, love will accept the angrily thrown stone, and our small tears will lose some of their burn in the great ocean of tears, and the arrow released to the bottom of the river will lose its point.

I thought for a while that not having known Paris at all would have been easier than having him and losing him. I wished he had never been conceived, that I would have never known what it was like to be pregnant.

But I realize the more I sit with his story, the more gratitude I have for Paris' life. He came, he lived, he was here. he wasn't a character or a myth, an abstract image or an idea. He was my son. He came for no reason other than that he was our son, and that I was always his mother.

I am still his mother. In the most beautiful sense of the word.

He's not with me, but he's ok. I made sure he was safe and not in pain and that is perhaps one of the bravest, most selfless acts of motherhood one can ever hope to accomplish.

I am so grateful that he came, that he was. I am a better person for loving him.

And I continue to mother him by telling his story. By taking all that love I have because of him and sharing it with the world. In all the moments when I pause and whisper his name, I am mothering him in the only way I will ever get to.

Paris came to us because he was our son. I will tell his story because I am his mother

italicized quotes from the Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo.