I stare at the television amazed by your grace and your strength and I wonder...how you do it?
How do you sit there and listen to those who didn't know him, didn't carry him in their body or pour their unrelenting love into his heart, say that your baby, your son, your daughter, your child, is somehow responsible for their own death?
How do you listen to them talk about the gift God gave you as if your child is a pawn to be reconciled through the lens of white entitlement?
Yet you remain steadfast, unwavering, unbroken, understanding like no other the course that must be won.
I look at you and I ache. I try to avert my eyes from the pain that covers you like a blanket. I count down the days, nauseous with fear, knowing that whatever the verdict…you still won't get to hold him again.
You won't see him graduate or marry or make the mistakes that you warned him about.
You won't see her grow and mature and learn the lessons that only time can provide.
Those things have been lost to you, stolen by a fool…impossible to recover with a gavel and a verdict.
Still...it should be said and recorded and decreed that she had a right to walk with “the freedom” and “the dignity” that doesn't require an explanation about her very presence.
He had a right to be afraid and angry when an unknown man stalked him in the night.
He had a right to live past a moment that he did not create.
How…do…you…do…it?
How do you continue?
I guess I already know. You do it for him.
Just like when he was inside of you.
Deep breaths...shared heart...one day at a time.