Gone longer than you were ever here, and I feel the shadow of you.
I have breathed more days without you than you breathed with me.
The days since you left have been counted and will always be. The 3rd of April will forever be the day you went away.
Just as the 5th of May is the day you came to stay…for a while.
In this life, I was lucky enough to be your mum. My Sage, the little old man who taught me so much. Now a teacher for many.
I miss you. I love you.
It’s my heart left behind that is learning now. Your heart stopped and mine changed classrooms.
Your heart began to beat and my heart shifted to the classroom reserved for mothers. There are a myriad of lessons there, many I learned, and many I was never given the chance to. The day you went away I was given the hall pass and told it was time to leave this classroom.
The hall pass directed me to walk down the hall to the classroom no mother wants to go to. The threshold of a death day, the place held for the hearts of grieving mothers. A special classroom of a select number of classmates, each on their own journey with unique lessons.
Inside this classroom there are many empty chairs. This is not a full room and you can only enter if given the hall pass with the specific instructions. The threshold cannot be passed until the death day.
I see now years later why there are so many empty chairs. The empty chairs are there so we can shift from chair to chair in our search for comfort. I shifted chairs many times, I shifted seeking the chair that hurt less. Some chairs I sat in for a long time, lingering in lessons. Some I sat in for mere moments as the chair felt like a hot plate sizzling my skin.
Last year on the 5th of May I was handed a new hall pass. I was told I could shift classrooms if I chose. It was my graduation day. All day long, my face ran like a river. Tears flow from tear duct to chin. It felt like a waterfall with the fall being memories and the pain leaving me, tear duct to chin.
A year ago on the 5th of May 2023, Sage was 21 in earth years and I had survived 10 years without my son. We both graduated that day. I felt the mother in me release. She stretched and sighed. Her job, although never done, was in some way complete now.
I held onto the hall pass and lingered a moment.
Was I ready to leave?
Were all my lessons learned? Did I pass?
Was my son proud of me?
Was my soul satisfied?
I ventured out of the classroom of grieving mothers and found myself in the hallway of possibilities. It all looked so familiar. I have been here before, I have walked this hall in many directions. I had always been allowed, not stuck, instead free to explore.
And explore I did in many directions…the pathway of deepening pain, the passageway of new love, the dead end of guilt and regret, and the alchemy archway of heart repair. I have ventured beyond them all.
In the year that holds the days between the 10th to the 11th death day and your 21st year and beyond I thought of you less and felt into me more. I see now that I am following your first request from years before, your request in the days after you went away.
“I’m okay mum, you be okay now.”
Sage, I am okay now.
I found the way through classrooms and hallways from my big life loss to my big life magic.
It is not a straight line or fast forward journey, and it is more than I expected it to be.
It is not the pathway of learning to live without you, or the lessons in loss. It is the journey that takes you to the crystalline expanse of your heart so you can breathe in and know as truth that our hearts hold greater capacity than we allow or know.
I know now that my heart was designed to break. I know why my heart broke. My soul requested it so it could bounce beyond the limits of a lifetime.
Losing Sage will forever be marked in time. Today, in honor of love and the capacity of all hearts I venture to a new classroom. Hall pass in hand, I walk towards the room where you learn to give your love away, and in turn teach others to do the same.
