Mother's Day

Yesterday was a tough day.

Sometimes, I'm tempted to think that I will get "over" my lost children. (dead is such a cold word)

It's been almost 4 years and I never really knew them, surely they will fade from me.

But in my mind, they grow. In this phantom-land, this in-between heaven and earth, there are shadow boys.
There, they are almost 4.

I might go a month, without thinking about them, then Toby finds his tongue, and walks around with his finger on it, saying, "Wud thatsh?" And 2 shadow boys are laughing, because they would have done that last year.

Then it's mother's day, and all my living children are too small to understand... there are no mugs with photos, no crudely painted drawings, no construction paper cards. Not yet. But in that other world, there would have been, this year. There would have been 5 underfoot, instead of 3.

And I, entirely human, am trapped between the beautiful now, the aching past, and the longing for the future, when shadows become reality.