Piéta

There is a world to come

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“O virgin mother, daughter of your Son, your merit so ennobled human nature that its divine Creator did not hesitate to become its creature” — Dante

Piéta

Yes, I know what it means

to mother an only begotten son.

I burgeoned him whole,

a slick foal

in winter light,

his body the mercy of stars

flaming on my heaving breast,

both of us

bloodied,

shining.

There was a life I imagined

where I sheltered him and kept him

from the cup of his path.

We ran through the pomegranate groves, laughing and falling, his hair cinnamon, the secret of him

kept only for us.

We were born to love the world,

I whispered,

and he went to the mountain

like Moses.

I could not stop his becoming.

The gifts of myrrh and frankincense.

The sanctuary. The wedding feast.

The well.

The crown.

Beholding him,

I trembled at his poetry,

the mercy he spoke

with quieted breath, prophecy

of his hidden life:

There is a world to come.

The ages no longer sleep.

Within you is a power that raises

ruin from its knees;

it flows from the temple

fiery and luminous.

It is there he upholds the entirety of love as I held him,

now returned

to immortal stars, creating

icons from ash.

To bear him

is to bear

the entire world.

Fly swiftly now

further into the burning heart

of God.

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On the 11th of January, we quietly honored our son’s fourth heavenly birthday.

I have been thinking lately of saints, of Jesus and Mary, and of miracles.

What it means to be a mother who has given life and, in turn, been gifted the fullness of life by the very child she carried and formed within.

What it means to nurture and sustain that life. To entrust that life to purposes greater than you can devise.

As I enter the heart of this winter season, I can confidently say I have never felt further from the belief of my own becoming. Sickness has brought me to the brink, yet not one step further. Most days, I cannot fathom a future where I am well enough to accomplish even the simple desires of my heart, let alone motherhood.

The vigor necessary to raise children seems to me something miraculous.

Mostly, I would settle for a cup of tea, a fire, the ocean, and violins singing.

A softening of pain. My heart open like a flower.

I witness my desires like stars: clear and radiant and burning beyond my hands.

The brightest of them, Atlas.

Something in me knows that within his story, there is a portal that leads to the blessed story.

The one that limns and underlies all of reality.

As Saint André of Bessette tells us, there is little distance between heaven and earth.

I rage and I pine and I weep, kneeling in ruins and pray.

Every day, I am becoming.

I am being transformed.

This is not to say I don’t look upon parents with children with unbearable grief. I do.

The cup is bitter. I think of Mother Mary. How she held Jesus.

How she held the entire world in her arms.

I think of all mothers and parents who have lost their children. Whether in the womb, or to illness, or to genocide, or to violence.

It is a special kind of grief.

It is because of this I know that death is not the ending but the middle of an upward arc. I live as a witness, devoted to midwifing the story we are still creating.

It is there Atlas dwells in the cloud of witnesses, unseen yet imminent. My little saint who prays, blessing and testing along my way.

In my heart of hearts, I know that I will experience the fullness of mothering Atlas. The fullness of his glory is also mine.

Nothing can inhibit the cause of life within us.

There is no prerequisite to this grace. There is no one shape our lives must take for the perfecting of love to be disclosed. It is not withheld but given endlessly, a perpetual fire.

Nothing can stop love’s fierce and tender pursuit of our souls.

There is cause for hope.

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Dear kindred,
Thank you for being here. It means much more than you know.

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