Upon Your 26th Birthday
How do I construct a day that honors you,
rather than surrender to my grief.
These seem to be my choices.
Fitful, restless sleep and a 10 o’clock a.m. rising
suggest I’ve begun the day missing the mark,
failing you again.
How do I recover, placing you boldly at
the center of this day; Evoking you completely in thought and word,
commanding total recall, absent debilitating sorrow?
Rematerializing you in minds-eye so vivid you
are present with us, smiling, long-lashed, playful,
tall and muscled, in one of your good moods.
How do I intentionally summon the feel of your
beating heart, ear pressed to your chest,
embraced in one of your all consuming hugs,
without the desperate, glacial void of missing you?
How do I construct such a day,
without inviting bleeding, intolerable loss:
Serve as resident keeper of all your hopes and dreams,
chronicler of your fleeting age, from beginning to end,
and survive this telling?
How do I construct a life that honors you,
rather than surrender to my grief.
This is the struggle for all that is left;
God’s uncompromising final exam.
And the answers remain a mystery.
Forever,
Your Mother
9/9/07
To reconcile the fact that I live on in spite of this awful hole, the only tolerable thing I’ve determined I must do is to spend my life time honoring him. The question remains how to do that. I have come to know this. Justin deserves to be remembered for his life, not his death. Above all I must recall his compassionate concern for others, his quick wit and quirky sense of humor, his unwavering discipline, his kind thoughtfulness and his continual desire to make things right for those he loved. And the horrible image I saw on the day I found him must somehow be forever replaced by the memory of him smiling.
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