The Solemn Witness

You left the day before my birthday.

Your spirit flew away and through the Veil despite my pleas for mercy and despite you clawing desperately to hang on in this realm.

There was no time for help to come. I held you alive one last time and I cursed at God.

You left me unwillingly. I felt you go.

I let you go. Unwillingly.

You cried out in pain and blind panic at not being able to take in enough air, and I sobbed in desperation. I held on to you and stared in disbelief when you went still.

I held on until I was assured that you weren't going to suddenly suck in a miraculous reviving breath and regain your senses. We clung together in that wretched moment right before Death, unwanted and uninvited, came to collect.

In the way that only the completely broken in spirit can, I sobbed uncontrollably. Wailing and keening from the depths of my soul until I myself couldn't breathe. I sobbed until I thought my jaw might break, until my head throbbed, and my heart felt it would stop.

Lying next to your cooling body, I somehow fell into a sleep until sun came up. If I had not experienced the terror of only a few hours before, I would have thought that you had simply fallen asleep. Still and beautiful.

Your brother had passed a mere three months earlier. I didn't think my heart could shatter any further nor that it could possibly ache any harder than when he left.

How wrong was I.

I lost my children. I lost my children...

Raw wounds upon raw wounds. Everything hoped for and once brilliant was now dulled and pale.

The big farmhouse greeted me with the whining of a spring on the side door as it swung open. The matron of the house offered quiet and most sincere condolences as I carefully carried you in. We then tearfully and quietly prepared you for your rest.

It was a beautiful December day and the sunlight filtered in through the woodsmoke filmed windows onto your small and still form. The light seemed so wrongfully radiant. I was angry even at the sun; I wanted it to be covered up with gray. The apricity seemed downright insulting--how dare it shine so warmly! I wanted that damned day to be stormy, rainy, sleeting and howling with nature's rage to match the state of my hurting soul.

Several wounded wild animals were in that place. The dichotomy between them lined up in cages against the Victorian wallpaper paused my addled thoughts for just a moment...what an odd old house.

Their cries and mutterings along with the everyday sounds of a farm life were interspersed with our quiet colloquy. But you remained silent in your forever sleep.

I kept waiting, hoping even, for you to lift your head and give me a dazed, sleepy look as if to ask, "What dream was that? Is it time for breakfast?"As if rising from an almost already forgotten nightmare. Breaking into waking. Easing into a calmer consciousness.

The relief never came. Hope failed.

You slept.

Yes, what an odd old house. Full of the past and ghosts of the past. This house that your brother passed away in before I could make it to his side to hold him as I held you in your last moment on this earth. A house where things came either to heal or to die.

In a quaint side room, we set in the presence of a particularly peculiar barn owl who had injuries of his own. Injuries--I thought sourly--he would most likely heal from and go home again to the woods or the namesake barn or wherever his little will would take him.

For now though, he was just an odd owl in an odd house.

He let out a cry.

I cried out in my own mind, "Why should a wild owl that no one loves get to live, but not you? Not...you?"

After you fought so valiantly and I fought along right beside you. We needed to win. We were going to win. We were supposed to win.

Until we didn't.

I cursed at God again for seeming to so blatantly ignore all of my pleas to heal you and make you whole once more. Not only for your sake, but for the sake of my own selfish love.

I looked up at that owl's heart-shaped face and into those strange yet kindly eyes the color of ink and deep as wells. His knowing, unwavering gaze peacefully glaring down upon us from behind the cage door. The solemn witness.

Turning back to you, I looked over your perfection one last time.

You were my dream. My lovely, sweet, and perfect dream.

I don't long to be angry with God, but I am angry nonetheless. I don't think I've ever been so entirely immersed in helplessness and so, so lost.

I prayed hard, I was determined not to lose you. Praying took every last ounce of strength and grit I had left.

He took you anyways. Though He knew I loved you. Maybe because I loved you too much.

You were supposed to live. You were supposed to have beautiful kids one day, but other plans were made over our heads and set in stone against my begging.

And...so ends the year. Wrapped in anger and drowning in despair. Soul broken completely, heart full only because it's laden with grief.

Oh, little girl. Little girl.

I'm forever sorry that I failed you. I'm sorry you were in pain and I couldn't ease it. If only I could have taken those pains into my own body to spare you.

I'm so very sorry, my beauty, my heart.

What do I do now? I still can't breathe. Every time I think of you, the wind is knocked out of me. Your passing was the ultimate insult to the already critical injury.

You're gone and I want you back. I want you and your brother back. I'm lost in the dark; I can't find any more light. My heart is now entirely ripped apart at its fragile seams and all is exposed to the bitter elements.

Everything hurts. It hurts into my bones.

You have found your brother and are with him now. I know. That strange owl told me so with one slow wink of his otherworldly eye.

Maybe someday I will talk to God again.

Not today. No...not today.

Rest, my little girl. Rest, my boy. Your struggles are over and you are in a light and greener place much safer and more peaceful than this broken, tainted world. You have no more cares.

You cannot lose anymore, but, I, my loves...I am tired of losing. Left only with the intolerable consolation prize of bewilderment and fury, I've lost all that's dear.

And I am weary for it. So very, very weary.