Just Beyond the Horizon

Dylan & me at Newport Beach 8-8-13

I feel the ocean breeze, ever-so-gently blowing my hair across my shoulders and cheek. I am amazed at how much peace and tranquility the beach has always provided me. An oasis when my life is in crisis, a refuge from the world that so often has brought me pain. You, my son, were my greatest surprise and my greatest loss. I find it profound that one little soul could hold so much influence but you changed everything for me. You were the perfect little boy I had always dreamed of but thought I would never have. When I looked into your eyes, nothing else mattered. God blessed me with you and I couldn't imagine my life without you. And then you were gone in a blink of an eye. One moment here and the next, you slipped away like the waves fall back into the ocean. It was so quick, so brutal and so final.

As I am looking out at the ocean and thinking of you, my third born and only son, I realize you would have loved it here. Even though you did get to visit the ocean one time before you departed this world, being only two-months-old, you never got to experience it the way a child should. You never felt the rush of having the waves crash into you or the salt water engulf you in a sea of foam. You never got to feel the soft sand tickle your feet as you dug your toes into it or feel the warmth of the sun dry your wet skin.


I watch your sisters and cousins play in the ocean and I think of how you are missing. No playmate for my nephew who is now the only boy in our family. No little duck tagging along after them, trying to keep up with the "big" kids. Like every other moment of every day, you are gone. Absent in a way that I have accepted but will never be accustom to. I can't escape the feeling that every moment is lacking you.

In the moment, the moment I knew you were gone and I would never see you again on this earth, I changed, morphed into someone else. In some ways, a fraction of the person I used to be but in others, I have grown in ways I never thought possible. Most of the time, I'm good at hiding my pain but there are the rare occasions that I am awkward, that my words come out odd or I answer with tears. I accept my new me and hope others can do the same. I have become acclimatized to the world I live in and the person I have become, a mother to a child that has died. I can say it a thousand times and I can write it a thousand more but it will never become easy. There is nothing easy about losing you.

The ocean is vast. As I look out over the water, as far as the eye can see, there is just endless blue. I find it comforting that even though we are farther than even oceans apart, that there is something out past the horizon. I may not see them but there are others past the deep far-reaching sea. I can't see anyone right now but someone is just beyond. It makes me think of how earth and heaven might be. I can't see heaven right now but it doesn't mean you're not there waiting for me, just past where I can't see, just past the horizon.