The Scintilla Project, Day 14. On Eagle's Wings.

Day 14.  We exert control over ourselves and others in many ways.  Talk about a time when you lost that control.

What do you do without your mom?

What do you do when you know you'll never hear her tell you everything will be all right?  When the last thing standing between you and this shitty, vacuous world is gone?  When there is nothing left of the woman who raised you but pictures and a handful of details you try so desperately to remember?

We knew it was only a matter of time before we saw this day.  I did what I could to hold it together.  Even during the viewings, as I looked at her lifeless face, flesh sagging like an ice cream cake left in the sun.  Even at the house, my father and brothers sitting about in silence, staring at the places she wasn't anymore.  I cried in short bursts, like a pipe venting steam to prevent rupture.  I could feel what thoughts would make me slip, what memories would cause my collapse.  And with despairing sobriety, I wrestled them back into my subconscious, forcing myself onto lighter avenues.

We were at the church.  I watched the magniloquent priest I'd never seen before sing her praises, watched my brother mumble through a reading.  I clenched my jaw to still my trembling lips, braced my lungs to steady my shuddering breath.  I knew it was coming.  On the rare days she conned me into coming to church with her, we would always sing together.  Her favorite hymn was mine.  It was only right it be sung this day.

I could feel my insides twist at the opening strains.  I had prepared for this.  I would visualize my mother in His hands, her spirit soaring in the cloudless sky.  I would find peace in her faith, and I would stand strong.

And yet, as the first few lines floated through the vaulted ceilings, I couldn't.  I couldn't.  Something broke.  I broke.  My plans crumbled around my ears as the reality of this fucking day washed over me.  She was dead.  For all the people gathered today in the cage of stained glass and wood, she would not be one of them.  Never again would our voices rise together in the refrain.

And I lost it.  I lost it with a wild abandon, with a fear that grasps at your chest and crushes the hope right out of you.  There is something primal in it, something fundamental and raw that devours all reason and light.  I pushed past the bodies between me and the end of the pew, stumbling over the knee rests in desperate flight.  There was no sense of decorum or propriety in my escape; I nearly ran down the aisle and burst into the September sun.  My shaking hands struggled to light a cigarette as I collapsed on the steps.

And I wept.  Pressed the heels of my hands into my eyesockets and bawled, my body lurching with every sob.  Perhaps you know this kind of sorrow, this inescapable flood.  And if you do not, I pray that you never do.  There are no words in this artifice of language to describe it.  The darkness of impotent anger and misery pouring freely from your eyes, nose, and mouth with an urgency that cannot be staunched.  Ecstatic convulsions of anguish that leave you withered and wasted, trembling and empty, with everything that you are and were staining the pavement in front of you.

Go ahead.  Rest your hand on my shoulder.  Murmur your lies to me; that she's in a better place, that she is watching over me.  Tell me that she would bask in the glory of her granddaughter's smile, that she would be proud of the man I've become.  And tell me how that makes a fucking difference.  The truth is in these four words: My mother is dead.  Her laughter, that stupid little dance she did when she was trying to cheer me up is gone.  The arms that held me when I was a weak, lonely child are dirt and wormshit.

It would be months before I could look my father in the eye.  Years before I cried again.  There are those who think me strong, who think I am calm and steady in the face of tragedy.  But the truth is, I am a coward.  Because once you have seen that blackness, that depth of heartbreak, you will do anything and everything you can never to see it again.  Even if it means lying to everyone who asks if you're okay until you believe it yourself.  Even if it means drinking until you can't remember why you're sad.  Even if it means turning your heart to coal and iron, knowing others will hurt like you, and you must feel nothing so that you can hear them feel everything.

I can't remember what her voice sounds like anymore.

And that is the saddest thing I know.