Sorrow-ity

Sorority sisters share something special,
or so I've heard - boys, drama, service
projects, junk-food-crying-jags at midnight.
No time or inclination for them at school,
I'm in one now. Would have run
the other way lest I be tapped. We all would have,
hiding until the angel of death
passed over. Sisters in sorrow,
we've buried a child. Or
(impossible for me to fathom)
two, even three. Had babies die before their birth
or shortly after, in our arms, received grim deliverers
of bad news. Phone calls saying Come Now.
Not much time, ma'am. How soon can you
get a flight? Enjoying a holiday meal,
we've heard our son collapsed,
our daughter's car hydroplaned. Heard a shot
inside the house, shots from a few streets over
and we knew, before anyone ran to tell. Doctors have
approached us in waiting rooms, shaking their heads.
A child is dead. It's obscene,
living past them, happens more
often than we knew. When we were just mothers.
Tapestry of our lives woven in a corner with this same
black thread, the boys (and girls) we miss,
drama of premature death, damn it,
that overlooked the mother and took the child,
no matter how old or young, doesn't matter.
Endless tears, enough junk food to feed small nations,
adult beverages, self-medicating that way
or taking (grateful for it) a pill to just help us think
about something else. Anything but pain. Today
I'm thinking of these sisters in sorrow, sorrow-ity
of suffering, some whose wounds are new and raw,
others with enough years and tears under our belts
we've learned how to smile again. It doesn't get better.
Sheila told me that, early on, and she was right.
But we get better at It.  I would have spared
you, beautiful ladies, if I could. God didn't,
but best not to hold it against him, counting on
the fact that life is short, however long it is,
that hands we miss, we'll hold again,
faces, laughter, all in store for us one day.
We'll know their love again.
We know it still.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2012