But it's not gonna happen. I have to meet my cousins and attend the inurnment of Aunt Winnie's ashes in the columbarium at Cathedral of St. John The Divine in an hour, in a vault where her husband and son already await her, and where there is one more space for her daughter, the last one standing. I remember when my Uncle Charlie bought the four-person vault, he joked with my husband and me that we wouldn't have to travel too far to visit him.
One of my son's friends is here for the weekend. She wasn't sure if it was okay to come for Mother's Day, but I told her it was just fine. I'm very fond of this young lady. Her own mother succumbed to cancer while she was in college, so I'm doubly glad she won't be alone this weekend. She and my son have been buddies since freshman year, and she's now doing an internship an hour away in New Jersey. She knows my son so well. This morning, after he made them both omelets for breakfast, he showed her a handful of vitamins he was about to take and she said, "My God, you're taking more pills than an 80-year-old man! What on earth are they for?" So he went through them, milk thistle for his liver ("Oh, right, you need that," she said), cod liver oil and Garlicin (zinc and garlic and echinecea) for his immune system, B-vitamins for his hangovers (he joked) and a multivitamin to cover everything else.
I reminded her that she was visiting that Sunday in his sophomore year when he lectured me on the fact that Americans have the healthiest pee in the world and don't need vitamins. All through college he resisted my suggestion that he take vitamins to shore himself up, and now he is taking them by the handful. "Oh that's how he is," his friend told me. "He never does anything unless he thinks he came up with it himself." Yep, she's got him pegged.
I didn't know you'd had a stillborn baby at 20 weeks. I am so sorry. I remember how I, how we, felt when we lost our baby at 13 weeks. I still think of and talk about that baby openly in our family.
ReplyDeleteAnd your son is the best. Full of life, smart, so handsome, loves his momma, visits home, has great friends, takes vitamins! xo
Hi Maggie, thanks for the empathy. I went back and took that graph out of the post because it is still too painful to look at it in plain black type. I also wondered, after, if I was poaching on my friend's privacy, even though I didn't use her name. But please know I appreciate your comment and know you know. xo
DeleteTell that boy he's supposed to take melatonin at night! =)
ReplyDeleteI didnt know either (then again, why would I?) about your first baby. That sort of made me shiver to think about, delivering a child you knew was gone. I can't imagine anything harder on this earth, and I am not speaking in metaphor at all.
SJ, I will tell him about the melatonin! Maybe he does take it at night, though. And see my comment to Maggie above about why I've deleted the paragraph about losing my first. But thank you for your comment here. xo
DeleteIt is so very hard- that loss of a child not yet ready. I know. It is a sorrow that goes without allowance for the grief we bear so very often. I'm sorry you had to go through this.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for that great and lovely son of yours- isn't he like most of us? Not doing anything until we come up with it ourselves? That is the human way.
Ms. Moon, the funny thing is my mother always said the same thing about me! Hugs, friend.
DeleteOne of mine does that. I have to quietly plant the seed (or shove a note under his bedroom door), run away and wait for him arrive at the same conclusion. Exhausting sometimes.
ReplyDelete