What is Left

All the sweetness is gone. Those wide, all-seeing green eyes. That full, springy head of hair and loping gait. That vitality, curiosity, and marvelous conversation. The promise of my younger son growing into his adult self while I grow old, bringing more life into mine. 

What is left is the cold of the glass in picture frames when I try to kiss Noah’s head like I used to, the absence of smell where there should be smoky-fresh hair scent. A few T-shirts packed in zip-lock bags to seal in his scent, still there, though every time I open them I dread their decay. Desperate writings mixed in with his college notebooks, full of despair and poetry I never knew he had. A small box of mementos that he sorted through a few months before his death, lingering over it for hours--contemplating the end? 

They say the loved ones we’ve lost live on in our hearts and memories. Maybe so with those who die naturally in old age. When a child of 21 dies by suicide, the pain, confusion, and emptiness can block our way back to the sweetness. At least from this point on the mourner’s path, nine months on.

The pop singer essence nails it in the song, Shape of You:

 Is sorrow all I have left of you

Besides the wall your name is carved into?

I’m not tryin' to get over, I just gotta get through

All I've got is a hole in the shape of you . . .

Or in the words of an old English ballad, here adapted from sweetheart to sweet child:

Once I had a sweet child and now I have none

Once I had a sweet child and now I have none

He’s gone and leave me, he’s gone and leave me

He’s gone and leave me to sorrow and moan.

Last night in sweet slumber I dreamed I did see

Last night in sweet slumber I dreamed I did see

My own dearest child, my own dearest child

My own dearest child sat smiling by me.

And when I awakened I found it not so

And when I awakened I found it not so

My eyes were like fountains, my eyes were like fountains

My eyes were like fountains where the waters do flow