What’s Left?

Last night I asked my best friend if he thought I could still claim the title of mother. He said yes without any hesitation. I wish I could be that sure. After pondering that aloud for a bit, all I could come up with was another question– what’s left?

Being a mother implies having a child. Is it simple semantics? Does saying “I had a child” equate with “I was a mother”? Can one be present tense while the other is past? It’s the same argument I wrote about in the previous post and the same argument I go through time and again in my mind. I want to be able to say yes as absolutely as my best friend said it, but the past-tense bit stops me. I still feel like a mother, but my child is gone. There’s no one left to mother. That role, for me, has faded into the past. It has changed incomprehensibly, and I no longer know where it fits in my life, where I fit, or what thread of the Universe ripped apart to create this break. It’s never how it should be. There is no explanation and no answer to the question of why. There is simply nothingness. There’s nothing left at all.

A Common Bond

My best friend and I took Andy’s Name in the Sand picture to a local craft store last night to ask about having it framed.  The clerk and I had a bit of a chat about matting and frame colors and all the other minutiae that I had no idea came along with framing.  Even with the 55% off discount, the end total came to $72 USD.  I’m talking about a 5″ by 7″ picture.  $72?!?  Obviously, there was no way at all I could afford that.  I asked if there was a way to lower the price, and the saleslady was able to get it to $54.  I asked about using a lower quality glass, but she didn’t want to budge on that one.  I told her the price really made a difference as to whether I could have the picture framed and intended to walk away at that point.

Then something completely unexpected happened. She had asked me about the picture earlier, and I told her it was a memorial for my son who had passed away three years ago.  As it turns out, she almost lost a granddaughter last month, and she wanted to help me do this for my son.  She took me to the “off the shelf” frames, told me the size to pick out, and said to bring it back to the counter.  My best friend and I proceeded to do just that and found a great frame that looked almost like the custom frame we priced earlier.

Back at the counter, the lady ripped open the packaging of the frame and showed me how it would look with the picture and matting in place.  Apparently, while we were picking out a frame she had spoken with someone else from the framing department and had worked something out for me.  Her coworker referred to “cheating the system,” typed in a few codes, and the new total for everything was roughly $24.  I don’t think they were technically supposed to let me use a ready-made frame.  I’m not sure they were technically supposed to ring up the entire package.  The saleslady told me that, yes, she did like to sell things, but some things in life are more important than sales.  I am so amazed and grateful for her kindness.

So there we stood– my best friend who is a guy with no desire at all to have children, a young man working at a craft store who I hope never experiences the loss of a child, and the two mothers trying not to cry about a loss that every mother fears.  Even though the saleslady had not lost a child, she is a mother.  By that alone, she immediately recognized the depth of my loss because she knows the role I filled as mother to my son.  She couldn’t understand my loss, simply because she has not experienced it.  She could, however, understand that I am a mother, and through that connection, we were no longer strangers.

As my best friend and I walked out of the store, the lady called me back to the counter, introduced herself, and shook my hand.  No words were spoken beyond that, but I saw the look of recognition in her eyes.  She knew how important this photo is to me, and she made framing it possible.  There are so many good people in the world, and she is definitely an example of that.  Setting aside commission and breaking protocol at a job she hadn’t been working long, she made something so important happen for me.  Motherhood is a common bond, for mothers whose children are alive and for those of us who would give anything for ours to be alive again.