For Thor - 1

Today marks the two-week mark of your leaving your life here with me. I can’t believe it’s been two weeks. Hell, I still can’t believe all this is real. There is much evidence to convince me that I won’t see your sweet smile or have a big bear hug from you ever again. I sit with the little black box that contains the remains of your earthly form...and still I am not convinced. The evidence cannot be true. The words I read on cards, and the mountains of food and flowers, and streams of calls and visitors; all are trying to tell me your beautiful life with us, as we know it, is done. Still, I cannot accept this terrible thing. The books on grieving say this is normal, that someday I’ll accept and move along. It seems a long way off.

We say you’ve gone on to bigger and better things. We say that you were always bigger than life. We say there is a purpose in your tragic exit at such a young age. We say that there is comfort in knowing you are so well loved. We say these things to somehow make sense of it all, to give meaning to something that has ripped out my heart and left it bleeding on the ground in the same place where you drew your last breath.

I want to yell at you for leaving me and not telling me where you are going. And why. And when you’ll be home. I want to hold you in my arms again and tell you it’s okay. I want to fix you supper and hear about your day at work and how you are making a name for yourself. I want to dance in the kitchen with you a few more times. I want you to tell me what it’s like where you are now and if you can hear me when I say, “Goodnight, Thor.” I want to hear you and your dad and brothers play guitars again while I soak it up and am quietly proud of all my men. Moms want a lot, don’t we?

The Big Ma (The Mother of All) in me knows that you are infinite and immortal - as we all are - in the One. The Mamma that brought you into this world and nurtured and raised you is not so willing to let it go. I mourn the fact that your beautiful body is gone and I can no longer hold your hand. I mourn that we won’t get to know each other as adults. I am heartbroken that I won’t get to see you be a daddy and get to help you learn to walk this hard and beautiful parenting road. A road that is fraught with so much more peril than I could have ever guessed.  

Oh, Thor. We must have made a deal; we must have struck some terrible contract before either of us was born. I agreed to be your mom and you agreed to be the wild, beautiful child that would captivate, inspire, love, help and heal so many. I must have agreed to the terms that you would live like a thunderbolt and rock us like a hurricane leaving countless people scoured clean of petty hurts and the fear of living life fully in the wake of your passing.

As horrible as it is right now, as tempted as I might be to want to go back in time and renegotiate that deal we made with Fate, I wouldn’t do it. There is a terrible perfection in all of this. Like a firestorm that consumes everything and leaves the landscape blasted only to awaken in full technicolor bloom at the first healing rain. My vantage point isn’t high enough for me to see the Big Picture. I cannot envision the thread of your amazing life woven into the tapestry and how many other threads are connected to it. I cling to my faith that everything is God and that this inexplicable happening is part of this Divine Plan, too. I cling to my faith that the healing rain will come. Probably in the form of tears from all who love you. Today the tears are shed out of anguish and sadness and maybe even a little rage. Someday they will be shed with fond love and warm remembrance of your beautiful heart and soul.

One day this blasted landscape will bloom again. And it will be beautiful.

I love you, Mom.