Mud

---The below excerpt is a chapter from my debut memoir, Temple and Ash---

I am sitting on the front porch watching a spring rain soak the already-damp earth. I so rarely sit like this; never allowing myself a moment to rest. To just be.

But today is Mother’s Day. 

And the weather is kind to me, poignantly reflecting my mood. 

As I watch muddy puddles form across the saturated lawn, an old song plays in my head. A song from childhood. Rafi, I think. 

The lyrics are silly and appropriately childish: Mud, mud. I love mud. I’m absolutely positively wild about mud. I can’t go around it, I’ve got to go through it.

It has been one month and eleven days since I lost my baby girl. The farther away the date becomes, the more acutely I feel the ache. It’s as if the rest of the world has moved on while I still wake up every morning, thinking of her. Yearning for her. It feels like my grief should have a timeline. A linear trajectory. And yet.

I still don’t know how to be a mom without my baby.

I can’t go around it. I’ve got to go through it.

Kris and I went to his parents’ house for an afternoon cookout. It was a pleasant enough afternoon; our 3-year-old niece, Lottie, wildly battling my husband with a pool noodle as the rest of us sat back and chuckled. 

He would be such an amazing dad, I can’t help but think. 

After lunch, Kris’ two sisters had pulled me aside. They hugged me tight, wished me a happy Mother’s Day; told me that the first one is always the hardest. That the heaviness will abate with time, but the memory of my daughter—the pain of losing her—will never fully vanish. I will never stop thinking of her, just as they never stop thinking of the babies they too have lost.

What an incomprehensible gift—sisterhood. The bond shared by women is unlike anything I’ve ever known. How I hurt when they hurt; and I know they feel the same in return. I wish like hell that they did not identify with this pain personally. I hate this club we all landed in together, vehemently against our will. And yet, I am somehow grateful that they know how to share this load; how to help carry my burden.

This is what it means to be a mother, I’m learning. To show up. Without an agenda or tired platitudes. To sit vigil. To wait. To be still. To hold back the edges of the sharpest ache with their company; their knowing.

I can’t go around it. I’ve got to go through it.

My god, if this hasn’t been the murkiest season of my life. How desperately I have tried to claw my way out of this bottomless pit of suffering, to no avail. I miss myself—the version I was before I knew the weight of loss so intimately. I want to feel joy again; want to throw my head back and belly laugh without the stinging reminder creeping back in like a nightmare I can’t outrun. I want to get better. And yet.

It’s the mud. It’s the grief. There’s simply no way around it. The only way is through. Each day, another step. A glimpse of hope. A faint whisper that one day, I will look back on all this wet dirt and somehow, see the beauty.