A Mothers Goodbye

 A mother’s goodbye

 (spoken word) 

I have had to say goodbye to my babygirl. 

I wasn’t given a choice. 

In my heart and head, I am grieving. 

I have buried her and imagined my life moving forward without her. 

I have cried a thousand tears at the life that is lost, the bright future snuffed out. 

I have said my goodbyes, my I love you’s. My “I miss you”. 

I have felt the numbness and void of my days unencumbered by her therapies, appointments & medication management. 

I have felt the deep sense of hollow that losing a child in the prime of her life, has left me. 

The haunting cold imagining of all the things she will never be. 

I have fallen to my knees in pure anguish 

and torn at my clothes like sackcloth. 

I have slept the slumber of a mother who only gets to giggle with her little girl, in her dreams.  So I try and sleep as much as I can. 

My baby, my beautiful baby daughter is gone. She is dead. “Completed Suicide” it’s called. 

I have bargained with God and begged for it to be different. I have waved my fist at him and felt anger at both God and at my baby. Why Had She decided that life is not worth living? 

But while my heart & mind spiral in grief…

she is alive. 

So why do I say goodbye? 

Because my baby wants to be dead. 

“Wants” is not a strong enough word. 

And she tries and she tries and she tries to die.

 With pills. With blades. With failure to thrive. 

I can want her to live with every fiber in my body. 

I can physically keep her body alive. 

I can insist that her heart keep beating 

Her lungs keep breathing 

But I can’t make her *want* to be alive. 

And one of these tries she will succeed. 

She will get her wish.

I won’t be there to stop her. 

And even so, she is dead inside already. 

She has told me, she knows she is loved. 

She knows she is seen. 

She knows she is heard and wanted and cherished by all her family & friends. 

But it doesn’t change the void inside of herself. 

It doesn’t change the way she views herself and her place in life.

Our love does not “fix”

 the fact she believes that life itself is not worth living and that it has nothing to offer her 

nor she it. 

It does not change her desire to not exist. 

I stopped.. begging her to stay. 

I stopped ..making her responsible for *my* feelings. 

I stopped .. asking her to deny herself and pretend that she wants to be here. 

I stopped .. believing that she could feel differently. 

I must accept what is inevitable, and so

I let her go. 

And in doing so, I say goodbye. 

This is not .. what I want. 

This is not .. what I had dreamed of, when I held my sweet babygirl in my arms and nursed her at my breast. 

This is not .. the life she deserves. 

This is not .. how I planned it. 

No parent should ever have to bury their child. 

No parent should ever have to say Goodbye… 

And no Mama should have to mourn a living child. 

#ProjectSemiColon  

“Because your story isn’t over yet.” 

The verse for my tattoo that I got for my baby, (as pictured above) she is so strong everyday. I used a semi-colon in place of the colon.