Winners on the flip-side
She pushes the cardboard-cutout sunshine to me and says would you like to add two dollars to your bill in support of the Childrens’ Wish Foundation? And I say sure and she hands me a pen to fill in
________________________
GRANTED A WISH TODAY
and as all mamas do I sign Evan & Ben
and then pause and add & Liam
and tilt my head and survey my work like a high schooler scribbling hopeful love matches on my binder, feeling pleased with myself and then fleetingly embarrassed and false and other murky, indefinable things.
Evan & Ben & Liam
I only came here for retail therapy and it's just a piece of cardboard. But out in the world, alone and surrounded by people, we are anonymous. Our sun could be the truth. Nobody out here knows he is gone.
I stare at it and it stares back, stuck up on the wall with all the others, and for a moment I wonder if some kind of magic will go POUF! and in some parallel universe my eldest is at playschool while I browse through the aisles pushing a double stroller.
sweetsalty kate
33 Comments
Reader Comments (33)
Liam is your son and since you have shared him with us he is our "sun" and yes, how appropriate to have the three brothers names on the cardboard sun ... helping in making wishes come true. =)
It can be a fine line to walk for you, but like everything, you handle it beautifully.
I always sign my mother's name on those. It keeps her alive.
And, apologies for going completely existential on you. I think I scared my own self...
I wish you didn't have to experience such moments as this one.
Much love,ashley
You signed the names of all your children. As you should.
I was thinking of Liam today, and of you. I believe that Ben and Liam were identical weren't they? I know that when parents lose a child, he, in a way, never ages. Normally, Liam would always be an infant for you.
While you will always carry this loss, it occured to me that (if they were identical) that in your mind's eye, he will grow alongside Ben. And through Ben, you will be able to know what your lost son would have looked like, at age 5, at 10, as a grown man. And though sad, what a sweet gift that is.
I hope I am not overstepping by presuming this. But if I were in your shoes, I think this would give me a small amount of comfort.
His precious face remains in my memory...
yes, exactly. i do it very, very seldomly...but when the occasionsarise where i feel it's appropriate for me to include my whole family in signing something, i always feel this slight burble of grace, the brush of the alternate universe where such a signature would be easy, uncontested, wouldn't expose anything.
then i wonder if people would think i'm a crazy woman if they knew.
then i smile, because i don't care...and because it is, after all, a pleasure just to get to write that name which i do so seldom.
I really could not have said it better myself.
My heart hurts for you and your grief ...
So...hold on to that parallel universe. Who is to say what our reality really is. Whatever is real, you are a mother of three, stretched thin between both (realities). I grieve your loss, and I celebrate your tremendously full life. Thank you for sharing it with us, with me.
Her prize, though? That was life. That was surviving a bone marrow transplant at 3; that was beating almost unbeatable odds. The wish seems nothing compared with the gift. And yet, and yet, my sister's depression flares up with each cough, cold, unexplained illness. 13 years have passed since the diagnosis and still my sister wishes on those stars everyday for the continued luck that universe has shown her 'til now.
As always, your writing is stunning.
Katie, DJ, Lucy, and Always Becky and Tori...