"...in the distance i could see
the town where i was born
it's gonna be a long walk home
yeah pretty darlin'
don't wait up for me
gonna be a long walk home..."
" A Long Walk Home", Bruce Springsteen. from the album Magic
I sit down to write something, anything, a few paltry words that might make a slight bit of sense out of the senselessness that has befallen us, and I hear the sound of a child crying.
I wonder if I really hear it, but I do.
Evie cries, tears, she cries hard and deep and I stop what I'm doing and I go to her.
It's the sound of my daughter, my little girl, my three year old.
The sound of our little girl.
It's the middle of the night and I hear a little girl crying. A little girl, the girl my Lauren and me made almost four years ago.
Lauren grew up an only child, not by choice, but because her mom and dad had a hard enough time making one child, let alone two or three or four, it had nothing to do with love or heart or anything else, they tried and tried and tried and Lauren was the only person they could make.
And what a beautiful girl, what a beautiful woman, they made.
After me and Lauren had Bailey, the first of three children, almost nine years ago now, I remember saying to Lauren, to Lauren, the love of my life, the love I always wanted more than anything and the love I always thought I'd never have, I remember saying, well, we've had our child, we've made a baby, you get to be a mother and I get to be a father, and isn't that enough, dear?
And for awhile it was.
But she saw, with her eyes, and she heard, with her ears, and she felt, with her big and beautiful heart: she watched and listened to what I had, with my brother and my sisters, and she wanted that for her only son, she wanted it for him so badly, and she put words to that desire, I looked into her gorgeous cornflower blue eyes, and I could see that she could not be stopped, I could see that when she saw Bailey she saw brothers and sisters, and so I let my fears go and I gave in to her, the way you give into someone you love harder than you ever thought you could love someone, I gave in to the love in those beautiful eyes, and we had Evie, and then we had Riley, just eighteen months later.
&&&&&
And now here I am, and my beautiful Lauren has died, and I am alone, with the three children we brought into this world, and I think, they did not choose this, they did not choose to be born into this cruel world without a mother, but then, how could they have, and how could we have known, how many thirty-something year old mothers of three children die, it's almost, but not quite, unheard of: when we made them we never dreamed they'd be left alone like this.
And now my little girl, just three years old, and now without a mother, she cries, hard and deep, and I wonder if she knows, if she knows that she has lost her mother, the mother who conceived and bore and raised her out of nothing more than abject hope and love, and I pick her up and she wraps her arms around me, and I think, I am alone, alone, alone, my girl, I am alone, and so are you, and I think, how in the hell are we going to make it, I think all this, and I pick her up and she sobs onto my shoulder, and I stifle my own sobs and think, my girl, if we had known, I think, my girl, I am so sorry, for all of this.