As Mother’s Day just passed and Father’s Day is around the corner, a running theme haunts my thoughts. These commercial, man-made days dedicated to honoring parents, while lovely in thought and deed, can be rough on folks who are childless parents.
There is a deep sadness reserved for those of you who wanted children in your life but didn't, couldn't or wouldn't bring them into the world. And for those of you who have suffered the lost dream of having children for any number of reasons. And for those of you who have lost a child to disease – your own or theirs. Or lost them to an unkind world that sucked them up and somehow blew them away from you. Most of all, it is a brutally cruel soul that doesn’t sob for you who is left with an awful yawning hole in your heart in the shape of your child, ripped away from you by inhumane man-made policies, by crime, or by abjectly unfair laws that stand between you and your beloved.
Though I'm nobody's mother and nobody's father, I am grateful that that there are children whom I call my own. Daughters, Sons, Nieces, Nephews, Grandchildren. You each bring a unique quality to my world. You each have your own special brand of awesomeness that I don't find in anyone else. I've loved you from the moment I met you. I adore each of you. I call each of you my “favorite” and tell you not to tell the others. I’ve watched as you flounder around, finding your way in this world, no less magnificent with all your gorgeous mistakes behind you and yet still ahead of you. I've watched you grow into your beautiful selves over the past decades. Thank you for sparing me the despair that is the life of childless parent.
As these hallmark holidays roll around, let us try to remember that there are childless parents among us. Let us recognize their pain. Let us hold them up and hold them tight and let them weep their pain away in our arms.
Nobody's mother
Nobody's father
I see you with the tears in your heart
Tears at the back of your throat
Tears like rivers down your cheeks
For the lost child
Tears in my heart
Rocks in my throat
Rivers drowning the world
For the lost child
Sucked up, blown away
By an unkind world
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