«I once had a son»

I hold onto the thought that he is still here, he still lives on in me and in our memory. But when I stop in front of his portrait, my thoughts lead me to say, «you look like a dream» there so perfect, that serene and tender smile, that image that accompanies me every day and at all times.

I want to continue seeing the world through my eyes, eyes whose pupils widen for small details, those instants that before were insignificant to me and are now everything. That’s what I would like, although I don’t know at what point I will manage to live without having that plan B under under cover, that if I need to get away I have somewhere to do it, and breathe, and stop, get off the world that keeps spinning…

How difficult it is to feel that normality as if nothing had happened. It’s getting harder and harder, and at the same time I want to say that this is how I am now without you, a new feeling has come to stay. It’s a strange sensation that I’ve never felt before, I have to find a name for it.

I remember writing about that part of me that left with you, that part of me that got excited preparing a gift or a surprise. I vaguely remember that impetus in showing someone the opportunity to open their eyes and get excited about something I generously prepared. Not anymore. I don’t feel that magic, I just let go and remember: allowing myself to feel and do as I wish. I give myself permission to feel, to say yes or say no… and it’s ok like that, and yet it becomes very difficult.

What goes against nature transforms me into a statue, which feigns moving to the sound of the world but in truth I remain motionless. Nothing matters anymore. It doesn’t matter what it is about me and my future, nothing will be the same or nothing will have the possibility of being something of what was destroyed, broken forever. Like in that story which I used to tell my little girl as a child, that already distant castle, that palace, that home that cost so much to create that I believed to be made of rock and robust alabaster, crumbled and vanished with a breath of air from an evil man. And I don’t feel like it’s victimhood, I know it’s time to go through this grief and I do that, but it’s hard, everything is hard…

The other day I read that the death of a child is the darkest night of the soul. How right, and what profound words and pain. Because at that very moment, when my soul knew, with a deafening silence, like a fall into the abyss where nothing is heard, I discovered inside me that my son was dead, that all that life, all that world that I had lived, stopped and I thought «and now what».

Re-reading feelings that others have suffered before, mourning explained with feeling, new words in my life that I never uttered before. All this came to stay and to transform me. I know that it is up to me alone to know what I will become, where it will lead me and how it will nourish my daily life from now on; I will continue to allow myself clouds and clearings.

«I once had a son»

Because I did have him. I will carry him in my soul, my womb, my mind and my heart. He will never be separated from me, and if I forget him, please remind me that one day I had an angel as my son. If my memory fails me, please show me the portrait that today accompanies me day and night and explain to me stories and anecdotes of his life, his short and intense life.

I am tired, exhausted to keep myself afloat, to know that I can do as I feel, but at the same time the armour weighs heavily – just feeling and wishing that I am in a better world is not enough to relieve me. I lack contact with any of the five senses – to hear his laughter, to caress his hair, to feel his presence… because my ego continues to squeeze and drown, and I have to win that battle.