Heavenly bodies
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My daughter is the sun, and I am a body in her orbit. Gravity pulls me towards her as I journey along a perpetual ellipse, veering closer, closer, then slingshotting out into space. For much of the year, I travel on my own, falling away but always within reach of her light or shadow. I am gravitationally bound to her. I go about my routine, always aware that I am her mother; that knowledge a gentle undercurrent to my days.
Inevitably, each spring as the rains bring greenery to the brownish hills, I feel it in my body before I know it in my mind. I will soon return to the closest point of my orbit. I feel her warmth on my skin more intensely than before. The orange poppies that bloomed in the sidewalk cracks and medians when she was born are pushing into view. Thoughts of her rise to the surface as gravitational pull gains momentum. Tears well up, ready to erupt at any moment, and quotidian tasks become overwhelming obstacles. The ellipse I am travelling on has brought me so close to the white-hot center of grief that on certain days it feels like I could be completely consumed. It takes so much energy to oppose the velocity of my fall, and I don’t want to resist. I just want to be with my daughter.
But I can’t. I am fated to continue my elliptical journey around her, but never quite touching her. And just as it feels as though I might spontaneously combust, I am moving away again, farther from her light and heat. I place her photos and keepsakes back in the box. I throw the crumpled tissues in the trash can. I answer emails and renew my driver’s license. There are poppies still in the yard for another couple of months and the spring sun is warm on my skin, but not burning.
With each year that passes, a new kind of sadness, as my orbit widens slightly and I no longer veer as dangerously near to the all-consuming center. Of love, of grief.
Does your grief have a season?