Gone

Lachlan died last night, in his mother’s arms.

I just came back from some business travel.  I have a task list a mile long.  I’ve been staffed on new matters and I have to get my hands around them.  There are deadlines.  Our cupboards are bare – and I mean bare – and I’ve got to get the shopping done.  Dinner will need made tonight.  Jack has a ball game.  Liam’s eczema is out of control and needs handled.

All of these things, the Stuff of Life, these precious nuisances – they’re all beyond me at this point.  My head is fuzzy, my attention span shot.  I refresh facebook ten times and hour, just to stay connected to a community that is impacted by this news (no one at work has been following the story, no one knows).  I keep catching myself holding my breath today.  Tears sneak up on me.  It’s so strange, how deeply I feel this grief for a family I don’t  ever see because they live in a different state.  I definitely don’t need any condolences – this is not my child, and not even a child I interact with on a regular basis.  And yet I feel unmoored.

Driving in to work this morning, the sun was offensively bright, the sky irritatingly beautiful blue.  The grass is so damn green.  It should be brown, it should be dried out and dusty and dull, dreary brown.  I need a drizzle, a gray haze, something to blunt the sharp corners of the world.  My eyes can’t take in this much light.

He spent the last week of his life on tractors, riding in classic sports cars, seeing sharks at the aquarium, cuddling baby puppies that his mother arranged to have brought to the house.  Giggling with his twin.  Oh, that he had had more time.  If I could have given him years of my life, I think I would have.

My knee is killing me.  I have three voice mail messages I should check.  A light bulb in the hall needs changed.  Lachlan has died.  These sentences are all true, these facts co-exist, and yet my mind cannot reconcile them all.

And now, having seen him through this illness, his loved ones must do the very hard work of grieving.  Continued prayers/thoughts for them, dear readers.  Lachlan is beyond our prayers today, though he’ll never be completely gone from my maternal heart.

How I wish this could have gone differently.