27

We have gone to Mexico almost every year since I was 14. My parents purchased a timeshare in

Cancun, and then later in Playa Del Carmen, which has allowed us to return every year to a familiar view,

a familiar bed, a familiar cerulean ocean. It has been an incredible gift. 

This fixed vantage point has offered interesting perspective as well, watching how a landscape, a town, away of life can change year over year, decade over decade. What seemed unchanging however was the sugar-white sand and the rhythmic, ageless beating of wave on shore. As it ever was.

Always the same. Always the same. Always the same.

But then one year a hurricane came and scooped away mountains of sand, pulling it out into the depths, somewhere. The shore, once soft and shifting, became a treacherous, rocky terrain of foot slicing, toe stubbing rubble and broken coral. 

It took years for the sand to return. At first a thin layer coated the craggy, broken shore. Then the sand gradually filled in some of the deeper cracks and edges, until finally the beach was again welcoming and kind. While there are still places you would step carefully, gingerly, it is undeniably beautiful once again. But it will never really look the same.

For those who have seen it know there is a crack in the heart of the earth.

…..

I have been trying to write again. Where before my fingers felt an urgency to get the words onto the page, they now feel sluggish; my thoughts jumbled. I would rather just lie down. 

I think before, my brain was working so hard to process, trying to sift through the onslaught of the unthinkable, that writing was the perfect place to tell the story of what was happening to myself. There were days where I had only finished one post and I was already beginning to write a second, and a third. I had to make sense of it.

But lately, it is not my brain working the hardest. The hard work is now in the very darkest part of my body. It is in my cells, my bones, my tissue, my organs. It is the glacial, bruising reconfiguration of my DNA. Jonah is gone, and words are hardly enough. It comes out instead as tears, moans, breath, sleeping, stillness, and an aching, ever-present yearning for the physical presence of someone I can never hold again on this earth. My boy. 

But since my brain is less frantic, I think I appear to others to be more myself than I have been for over a year now. I seem studier, and maybe lighter. I maybe seem okay, but I am not okay. I don’t think okay will happen for a very long time. I am not sure that work can even be measured in days, months, or years. It is a lifetime’s work. Maybe not even then. 

I am having to form a new life, completely. A new life. Imagine that. Everything you have poured your heart and soul into. Your very life’s trajectory and passion, just one day, gone. Start over. Get over it. Move on. People around you forget. Not their fault. Life moves on. But…your life, which was all about building up his life, gone. Both gone. Can you even imagine? I couldn't have, but now I am living it. The life I have now is something I could have never imagined. I can still hardly wrap my head around it. I still don't even know what it will be like in the coming months and years.

But I can tell you what today is like. Today is 27th Jonah’s birthday, and I have no call to make. No gifts to buy. No cake to celebrate. I couldn't get out of bed until almost 1:00 pm. I have cried the whole day like a mother who has lost her child. As a family, we met at Giordano's and tearfully toasted him, quietly weep-singing happy birthday over a small bowl of ice cream. Then we went and lay down next to his grave and wept once again, clinging to the grass. We spread peony petals from the garden and a crumbled chocolate chip cookie over him, celebrating with him the only way we can now.

This may be one of the hardest days of the year, but everyday is like this to some degree. There are so many things he should be here for. So many phone calls we should have had. So many things that should have been celebrated. Maybe there would have been a wedding. Maybe there would be a grandchild. 

But all of this shoreline has been carried away to the depths of the ocean. And while the first layers of sand are starting to return, but it will never really be the same again. 

For those who have seen it know there is a crack in the heart of the earth.