Screaming

Everyday I wake up screaming. My face is a mask of calm as I kiss him good morning and start our coffee. My movements feel mechanical but to my husband they look fluid- practiced. I make breakfast, feed our remaining son, kissing him good morning as his ever-growing arms wrap around my wide waist. They connect around me like a vice, despite the weight I have gained. Yet still I scream, in the deepest parts of me I am breaking, howling in pain at the loss, throwing things at the images my mind assaults me with daily as I look lovingly at my broken boys. Yes, they are broken too, because when you lose the baby you carried and birthed and loved for eight months, everyone breaks. The Earth shattered when I got the call and I knew in that instant- even without truly knowing- he was gone. My heart burns as I write this, because a mother can feel when she loses a child. There are things people are not meant to see in this world, and your lifeless baby, whom left just two hours ago, on an ER bed is a terror my unbelieving heart prays no one else will have to endure. So here I am screaming and ravaged on the inside because of the loss I carry, that my husband and my nine year old carries. I support and I hold and I console them- but I want to scream, and yell and break things. I need to hit and hurt and bleed on the outside just as I do on the inside. I feel the need to run and forget because there is no bringing my sweet shining star back. I can’t take solace that he is in a better place because I do not believe such place exists. He was the beauty- our slice of heaven in the flesh and his light was extinguished. Snuffed out so suddenly I couldn’t even cry at first as my husband collapsed as we held our baby one last time. Studied every last pore on his face, felt his fingers that no longer held any grip. I sat there and made call after to call to family and repeated the same hollow sentences as I held this vessel- because it was no longer my baby. His body not longer shined with life and his eyes would no longer sparkle with mischief. We followed all the protocols and had our service and now I carry my baby in a box on a shelf, and I feel nothing towards that box. That box is an awful, ugly reminder and I hate it. It marks the end and the dark and sometimes I was to scream at it and throw it across our living room. Though, with all the hatred I have for it- it is the lifeline for my boys. They hold it and talk and cry at it like there might be an answer. So I hold in my screams, my rage and my utter despair, and drink the coffee, serve the breakfast and pretend.