To the Moon and Back.

“I understand it now. I understand what happened and that it’s not our fault. I miss him and there are so many things I could be doing with him right now and I never will.”

There is something perfect about the way a tiny baby melts into your warms, a warmth that gently forges the unbreakable bond between mother and child. Gently rocking the tiny bundle in our arms, we dream of their futures and the perfectness that it will be. We celebrate their firsts and we wrap them in our love, erasing the hurts with a mother’s kiss. We feel every pain, we celebrate every triumph, and we fiercely defend them against criticism and threat.

He is 10 but wise beyond his years.

I am, at once, frustrated and filled with pride by the maturity that is perhaps an unfortunate outgrowth of the experiences of his childhood. It is life’s cruelty that death robbed him of the childhood innocence that all mothers hang on to long after their children have left it behind.

At four, I watch him struggle to lift the heavy mantle of manhood. He remembers his father telling him his most important job is to take care of his sister, and I bristle at the memory of that conversation and the burden it has left him with. His tiny hand reached for mine and I was keenly aware of the moment when his hand left mine so that I could accept the folded flag. As the finality of it all set in, sobs wracked my body and I felt his eyes on me.

Why are you crying, Mommy?

I’m crying because they are celebrating your Daddy.

Don’t cry, Mommy. It will be okay. I promise.

To protect me, he would not show his pain or the tears that came with it. As he did on that earthshattering night, he still retreats to the dark of his bedroom when the moments come. Through the years, I’ve watched him process and navigate this unfortunate inheritance. Our bond is stronger and he is fiercely protective of the little sister whose protector he became that night so long ago. He does not want to be known only as the boy whose Dad died, carefully choosing when and with home he shares that most personal detail of his identity, nor does he want his father to be forgotten. And in those moments when sadness overwhelms him, my failure to protect him from pain is magnified in excruciating high definition.

With age has come new clarity and old questions now require deeper answers. Too many times in past months have I wrapped my arms around him as sobs wracked his body at the unfairness of it all. Too many times have I watched him walk angrily away as the words ring shrill in the air. Too many times has he spoken of the children he will one day have and how he will give them what he does not have.

It’s just another thing I can’t do because I don’t have a Dad.

We place high expectations on the men we love. We expect them to be indestructible and infallible and yet we demand a deep capacity for love, a combination of volatile extremes. Whether we mean to or not, we set these expectations early on our sons and so, perhaps, it is the reason that their tears and hurts become more painful for us to bear as the young man emerges from the little boy we promise to love forever and to the moon and back.

“Mom, I love you. More than anything.”

“I love you to the moon and back, my lovely boy.”

…

“But I can’t say the same thing about the smell of your room. What is that?!”

"Might be my pits. Us men have sweaty, smelly pits."