Rubble

I just spent the last hour and half speed cleaning the house. I have been working on it all week but could never wrap it up. Tomorrow is Sunday and I want to wake up to a clean kitchen, a table without socks, old newspapers a petrified bits of sandwich and old milk cups.

It would be nice to have some clean towels, a faux leather sofa that isn't sticky, and a floor that doesn't turn your socks gray. I am pretty sure I have achieved that and I am all sweaty to prove it. While I worked I talked to you. From the outside I must have looked like a maniac running around a mile a minute all hopped up on pecan brownies talking in an empty house.

Your brother is out at a party, your sister is in her room watching the Soprano's because she knows I don't want her to watch it in the living room, the violence puts me on edge. Your Dad went with your brother because being here with me is like having a kidney removed with a serrated kitchen knife. We just don't like each other anymore.

I was talking to you about the kitchen, how beautiful it is and how long I waited for it. Remember planning it? It never came together, always something. A week after you left it arrived in bits and pieces. I think you made it happen from where ever you are. I can imagine God saying "You can do one nice thing for your mom" and you saying "Let's make the kitchen beautiful she will know it is from me" I do know it is from you, I just wish you were here in it. I would give anything to be bitching at you for leaving a big mess, for leaving nut shells and orange peels on the counter, for leaving empty espresso cups and big cooking pans full of olive oil and the remnants of stir fry. I would grab you up, wrap myself around you and tell you how much I loved you and how beautiful and wonderful you are.

I mopped your room, it seems so empty now, you filled it up with flowers, music, your nerdy clothes, and piles of books. It is so bare now like a shell, like a silent forest. You know that it once held life and is sacred but you can not touch what once was just remember it.

I told you that missing you was the hardest thing that I have ever been forced to endure, even the toughest times we had when you were here could not touch this. I was so whole when you were here and when things were painful at least we had each other to hold onto, to talk to, to love. This is just a part of my life, the part that is left.

My life feels like the day after a disaster, I am standing here and everything I love most is gone, without warning, without reason. It is just destroyed. I have to search through the rubble collecting parts and pieces of what once was and build a new life with it. In the palm of my hand are melted things, broken things, unrecognizable things. I have no idea what to do with them but they are all I have.

Everything is kind of falling apart around me, but I close my hand tight around these precious relics of what I had. Let everything around me fall, let it all blow away on the wind. I will sit here alone in this house and rebuild something. I don't know what it will look like or feel like but it will have to do won't it.

Come to me sweet girl and tell me where you are. Tell how to build this thing, show me how to hope again. Wake me from sleep, sit on your bed and tell me what I need to know, save me.

Winter is coming. This is a year of first things without you. I built a fired, I put on big socks, I made a hot breakfast. The rain will come, the biting cold nights, the days that are over before they begin. We will not do Christmas, not without you. You were Christmas, you made it fun, you made me believe in Santa again when I broke it to you that he was me. You convince me I was wrong.

Thanksgiving, screw Thanksgiving. It was the day before your surgery, the day before you started dying. I don't want to think about it, I can't, You were so afraid, for the first time you thought we were in trouble. Damn you for being right.

Stand next to me sweet girl, put your soft arms around me like you used to, lean your head into my neck and sigh. Oh what I would give...

I am here lamb chop, everything has changed but I am still here, I am still your mama and I still love you. If you ever want to come home, I am here.

I love babyness...

Mommy