I should be better

I should be better at living without her. I’m not. Eight long years later, and I’m not. I try to be a good mother to her, but I’m not even sure what a good bereaved mother should be. I don’t know how to mother a child I barely know. A contradiction, isn’t it? How off-balance the scales are. On the one hand, I am the only one who truly knew her; on the other, it feels like we’ve drifted apart like strangers who met for a brief life-altering moment and then—then nothing. 

I have tried to live boldly and fiercely, and in the way I keep telling other people to do. I tried until the flesh dried on my bones and the blood drained from my veins, but most of the time, I can’t. Such is the nature of aging grief. I search for her in the faces of babies I do not know. Dead ones. Never alive. Because I have never seen her alive, crying, moving, breathing. I make out a similar nose, earlobe, fingers, toes, but they’re not the same. Never the same. And it aches. Oh, it hurts. Eight years later, and I’m still a cracked vessel, the life slowly seeping out of me. 

I should be better.
I should be better.
I should be better.
I’m not.

I should be better at letting go. I’m not. I should scatter her ashes, dive into a wave and there, beneath the surface of the water, release her. Free her from the prison of my anger and resentment. Free her from the agony and tangible sadness that engulfs my soul, release her before it’s too late, before I too fade to dust, and she’s left in a box in someone’s bottom drawer or an attic, forgotten. The child that should have been. They’ll remember her that way. Not Zia. Nobody will speak her name or know that it means light. Maybe if I open the box again and see the gray ash that remains, I’ll understand that she’s gone—never coming back. How do I prove she was here if I have nothing left to hold? So I hold on, walking past the box of devastation daily, trying to pretend it doesn’t exist.

I should be better.
I should be better.
I should be better.
I’m not.

I should be better at remembering. I’m not. I don’t handle death days as well as I used to. Early on, I used to light candles, decorate cakes, and give to the needy in her honor, but I stopped as the years went on. How do I commemorate a life that ended so soon, so unexpectedly, so cruelly? No amount of rituals will ever bring her back to me. So I ceased trying. 

I don’t recall what she wore when they took her away from me that cold evening in July. I just know that they did and that I would not be bringing her home with me. I don’t remember the time she was born, to the minute. It could have been four p.m. Did I hold her enough or let her go too soon? I don’t remember the feel of her skin on my lips or the scent of her. The exact shade of the color of her brown/black hair. Aren’t those things a mother should remember? Aren’t we wired that way? 

I should be better.
I should be better.
I should be better.
I’m not.

I should be better at coping with other people’s birth announcements. I shouldn’t feel that rush of panic and the tightening of my chest. I shouldn’t plaster on a smile. By now, I should be over it, over the envy, over the jealousy, over the questions. I’m not. If anything, I question everything more. I wonder why it had to be me, why I didn’t know she was dying sooner, why I failed her? I turn to my husband at times and remind him, “She should have been eight.” He smiles that sad smile that tells me he knows. She should have been eight. 

I should be better.
I should be better.
I should be better.
I’m not.

What are the expectations you place on yourself about your grief and loss? How does it differ from the kindness you show to others?