Nothing says spring like tulips and daffodils. I love when their sweet faces open to the warm sunrays. I know how they feel; I do the same thing after a dark cold period. A storm raged last week and took whatever was left of their blooms and carried them away. Their time has ended and it is now time to make room for other stars of the garden, like the irises, azaleas, and lilacs. Although I am saddened to see them go, I know that their blooms were a foretaste of what is yet to come.

I had an incredible honor bestowed upon me, an established writer asked me to be part of a series she is doing in May. I was to write 300 words about my experience with losing a child. Any of you who read my entries know that I tend to be wordy and keeping it short was my downfall. She said that I obscure my story behind the abstraction of poetic writing. She is a dear lady and wants nothing but what is best for me. I look to her as a mentor because she is a fantastic writer and having her reach out to me is an honor. I have learned so much in the short time I have worked with her. To have her spend time with an infant writer says a lot about her character. She is pushing me as a good teacher would push her student.

Yet, it seems that it is beyond my grasp. If I were to reach for what she suggesting it would mean to let go of what I have created. My writing voice searches for beauty in the ugly. I needed that beauty like I needed the blooms of the spring flowers and it was such a reprieve after the darkest period of my life. Is it time to let that season pass?

A storm also rages in me.

I sit in the damped sanctuary and everything has been scrubbed clean. I see the remnants of the daffodils, their stems stripped clean of their beauty, their petals dance on the wind. I too feel striped clean, shaken up and exposed. Maybe it is time to grow up and move into the next stage. Does it involve writing?

With that said, I will leave you with the piece I submitted.

The Lake

The lake was like a mirror. Reflecting an upside down world.   It is beautiful but deadly. “I am not strong enough be this person,” I whisper to its creator, “I can’t live this story, please erase this chapter and write something new.”

I remember saying the same words over twenty years ago, when I held a stick with a positive sign of a pregnancy test. I am not strong enough to be this person, young and in a bad relationship.

Loving the child made me stronger and together we created memories; chapters of first steps, first days of school, first car and first dates. I stand here at the end of his story, feeling cheated. It ended too soon.

What am I now that he is gone?   I ask the lake that took my child.

I’m broken. A series of hairline cracks and one false move I may shatter. And the dark monster of sadness threatens to devour me. I am not strong enough to fight it.

The Creator’s whisper is on the wind, “Don’t let this be how his story ends. It is not about you but about who he was. Fight and his story lives.”

I am fighting to keep his story from being about the end of me and I am learning the power of love and where the source of that power comes from. I found it on the shore of the lake. The power that lake holds is symbolic to the power of its Creator. I long to be closer to it, to float upon it’s surface and feel the power of its waves beneath me.   Fear holds me back, “I am not strong enough to be that person”.

At the water’s edge I hear the Creator’s voice in the waves, “You are not strong enough yet, but this is not the end of your story”.

To be continued….