Space

There’s a space in this world that my son used to occupy.  I am the sculptor that first chiseled this space.  But as he grew, he carved it for himself.  His space in the world.  He molded a life and staked his claim in a space that was his.  For nearly 30 years, it was his.  His life, his space.

For a moment after he left this earth, his space hung in stasis…a limbo of sorts.  It stayed elevated in the air like Wile E. Coyote unknowingly speeding off a cliff.  But just as in the cartoon, the inevitable drop came.  His space fell away.

It is filling in now.  Bit by bit, the world moves on without him, and the sands of his one-time life cave in.  He no longer occupies a place at work….his car no longer occupies a space on the road….his presence no longer occupies space with his friends wherever they are gathered.  The air that was his to breathe is needed elsewhere.  There is no longer a portion of the atmosphere pushed aside to make room for him in the world.

I didn’t expect this part of the reality.  I knew it, of course…but this black hole, this antimatter….I didn’t expect that.  His space in the world is truly and irrevocably gone.

There is, however, a space in my heart.  It is a space that my son occupies.  He carved it himself from the moment be began.  He carved it in the granite of mother love: unmalleable, immutable, nontransferable.

This space will never fill in.  No one else can occupy it.  Nothing can mold and shape the chasm that remained when he went away.  The space for my child is there forever.

I have the appearance of wholeness.  I live and breathe and love and laugh.  But all of this I do with a hollow in my core that can only—ever only—belong to him.  I will go on occupying a space in the atmosphere for myself and for him.  Here with me, ever with me, I will hold him.  Exactly as he started.  Exactly as we started.