Missing Mama

Today at work, I had a fleeting thought that I would call my mother when I got home. Almost as quickly as the thought came, it was shoved away by the echo in my head that screamed, "your mother is dead." I can't quite wrap my conscious mind around this reality, or maybe I just don't want to do so. Her death last week was sudden. I tell myself that if only there had been time to prepare for her death, a lingering illness, a bedside vigil, that it wouldn't hurt so badly, but I know that I am grasping at straws. There is no preparing for the death of your mother, no matter how death comes for her, it will rip you asunder.

I am adrift, going through the motions of living but disconnected from the process of living. I am surprised at the numbness, the vacuum that hovers inside me where my heart should be. Sometimes, I don't think that my heart is even beating. No matter how much noise is in the room, I feel nothing but silence. Last night I turned the television up really loud; it made my head ache, but it didn't fill the silence.

I thank each of you who stopped by to leave me kind words. They are greatly appreciated. I have heard that time heals all wounds, but no one ever tells you how much time. So I'll wait.

Today, I hid in the bathroom at my office for a while. Everyone is kind, but they look at me as if they fear that I will start shrieking and wailing at any moment. I suppose that I have the look of the wounded about me. As I sat on the porcelain altar in the office john, I heard myself whispering, "How do I go on?" I eventually grew tired of the bathroom, there really isn't much to do in there. I came back to my desk and started to write. Writing always soothes me. Here's what I wrote today. My boss thought that I was really working. Maybe I'll really work tomorrow.

Learning to Breathe Again

This is how people go on...

driving down the highway
singing back up for Aretha,
chain, chain, chain,
chain of fools
This is how people go on...

staring out the office window
finding patterns in clouds,
white cotton remnants
floating in the waning summer wind

This is how people go on,
when emptiness becomes a constant companion,
holding you in a tight embrace,
inhaling your breath
until suffocation and silence fill the room.

This is how people go on...

looking for that road to anywhere
dreaming of the crossroads
where she still stands
waiting to embrace you and dry your tears

This is how I go on,
one breath at a time.

--Sheria Reid
copyright 9/21/08