AFTER

 

 

Barely the day started and... it's already six in the evening.

Barely arrived on Monday and it's already Friday.

... and the month is already over.

... and the year is almost over.

... and already 40, 50 or 60 years of our lives have passed.

... and we realize that we lost our parents, friends.

and we realize it's too late to go back...

So... Let's try, despite everything, to enjoy the remaining time...

Let's keep looking for activities that we like...

Let's put some color in our grey...

Let's smile at the little things in life that put balm in our hearts.

And despite everything, we must continue to enjoy with serenity this time we have left. Let's try to eliminate the afters...

I'm doing it after...

I'll say after...

I'll think about it after...

We leave everything for later like ′′ after ′′ is ours.

Because what we don't understand is that:

Afterwards, the coffee gets cold...

afterwards, priorities change...

Afterwards, the charm is broken...

afterwards, health passes...

Afterwards, the kids grow up...

Afterwards parents get old...

Afterwards, promises are forgotten...

afterwards, the day becomes the night...

afterwards life ends...

And then it's often too late....

So... Let's leave nothing for later...

Because still waiting see you later, we can lose the best moments,

the best experiences,

best friends,

the best family...

The day is today... The moment is now...

We are no longer at the age where we can afford to postpone what needs to be done right away.

-Caitriona Loughrey

I am living in a life “AFTER”.  We all have moments in our timeline that caused us to change, to ponder, to reassess, to change.  Those are complete sensory moments that stay fresh as the next remembering.  I have just gone through one.  Once we were (not such a neat package) family.  We were a mother, a father, and seven children.  An earlier moment in time, we were divorced persons.  A major change happened and I had to remake myself.  Complicated relationships happened and I watched as one divided the others at different times and the family could always say, “That’s just her!”  But “just her” could be horrible, cruel, and devastating to some at different times that the complications arose.  I stood off in the fringe of it all and tried to be supportive, forgiving, and open to apologies… the prodigal daughter returning time and again until she didn’t.  Each time there was a return, there was change.  Each time she drove us off, there was a change.  But, this time, the moment are huge.   I stave off imagining what her last moments were like… And the moments after that moment.  I cannot make this real.  Perhaps we love the estranged more, in ways, than the other.  It is a different kind of love:  a longing, a wishful, a hopeful, a steady patient waiting, a non-reciprocal love.  Now, it can never come.  I change.  I have changed before.  I know how to deal with change… eventually. 

Is there a term for a parent who loses a child?  Not an Ex-mother.  Not a widow.  Not a... what is it I am not?  I have not just lost her... I lost her in so many ways since she was a teenager.  I lost her to mental illness.  We were all abandoned by her many times and in many ways.  I ought to be used to this… “this” but not this.  I feel guilty when I feel a sense of relief.  I am relieved she does not have to make herself suffer so.  I am relieved that her siblings do not have to be recipients of her illness. I always took the pressure off by allowing her to hate me so most of her siblings only had a few times where she struck out at them and then walked away. II am relieved we do not have to keep secrets any more.  The morning my youngest daughter called to tell me, it was the first thing I said, “No more secrets!”

It is AFTER and I am a mother who has lost a child.  Even the meaning of Lost does not fit.  I never lost her.  She lost us.  She has passed away…sounds so bland and does not even infer the pain left behind.  Condolences fade, as it should, because I cannot bear the rip of another bland offering.  I am sorry does not even begin to speak to the sorrow needing comfort.  The weight of grief is difficult to share, sometimes.  As a mother, and being who I am, I bear this alone and am like a child in a crazy mirror attraction at some fair.  There is no way out of the grief, no encouragement makes any difference.  It is still heavy AFTER she was found on the bathroom floor at dawn.  I cannot just “get over it”.  There is a wound right to the depths of my soul.  This time she has abandoned us for good.  And we, I, have to simply get through the rest of my days without her and without any hopes she might return again to her mother’s arms.  Where do we put all the love for her now she is gone?  I am left holding my hands out full of rose petals and I have no place to put them.  The petals are withering and yet I am left holding them.  When do I put them down and go on without that love? AFTER.  I am living in her after.  There is a dull ache I tell no one about.  That dull ache is precious.  I am a mother living her daughter’s AFTER.

©Carol Desjarlais   8.13.23