I feel him.

Christian.

It feels as if there’s a magnet sewn into my skin, pulling me toward him. I dream of him. I see him on a ship, a storm raging. He gazes into the maelstrom, and I would swear he sees me.

But this is not what devours all my waking moments, now.

It’s not Christian, but my child, my Henry.

I see it all happening again in a flick-frame montage:

Giving birth, holding the messy bundle that is my newborn son—

Changing diapers, breast-feeding him, swaddling him, rocking him back to sleep at 3am—

Being exhausted and exhilarated by motherhood.

Then, suddenly, Henry howling in obvious and heart-wrenching agony I can do nothing to stop—

A doctor in a white lab coat, balding with a terrible comb-over, stethoscope over his shoulders, pens in his pocket, an earnest and compassionate expression expertly pasted onto his pudgy face, his mouth moving in slow motion, words distorted, only a few syllables clear: brain cancer…inoperable…palliative care—

A darkened room in the pediatric oncology wing, Henry in a crib, tangled cords and tubes and wires making him look more like a science experiment than a human baby, a monitor beeping slowly, an oxygen machine pumping even more slowly, the green accordion bag inflating and deflating in decreasing intervals, until the moment of flatline—

A tangled mess of blurry days and moments, signing papers, events swirling around me rather than to me, Christian always beside me, but like a thing of iron and marble, an automaton—

A bright sunny day, brilliant and cloudless and hot; a group of black-clad individuals with somber expressions, standing around a tiny casket, a miniature thing of polished black wood with bright silver accents; a minister speaking words, Christian tossing a handful of brown soil onto the casket landing with a loud clatter, Christian trying to get me to do the same. But I can’t. I said goodbye when he entered the arms of the angels, and I cannot bear another goodbye to my son.

The montage ends there—

With my inability to say goodbye at the grave.

I see it again and again and again—Christian with that handful of rich dark loam, letting it trickle over the edge of his palm onto the casket, a ticking rumble as dirt hits wood, a hollow sound, and then he upends his palm suddenly and abruptly, opening his fist so the handful of dirt vanishes into the hole of the grave. I see Christian doing that, again and again.

I’m standing behind him. I have a thick wad of tissues in my hand, sodden with my tears. He turns, stretching out a hand to me.

“Come on, Ava,” I hear him say. “One last goodbye.”

“I can’t.” I hear myself say the words. “I can’t. I already said goodbye to him. I can’t do it again.”

I see myself turning away, my heels digging into the grass. I see myself walking away from my son’s grave.

I see this on repeat, a series of moments stitched together and looped.

And then there’s AFTER.

After the burial, once we arrived home.

I left one of my shoes in the living room, on its side, just behind the couch. The other I left in the hallway our just outside our bedroom, upright, but the toe facing back toward the living room; I can still hear the shoe wobbling on the hardwood as I trudge listlessly to the bed, the shoe tipping side to side before going still. I remember lying there, under the blankets, in my funeral dress, staring at the photo of Henry and me. He’s so happy in that photo. Grinning ear to ear, a gummy, happy grin, eager and innocent, a bit of drool on his chin. His hands are in the air, blurred, mid-wave.

I stared at that photograph for so long that it is burned into my brain. I can see each individual detail: I am wearing a red tank top, the strap just barely visible, and I have my favorite tiny diamond studs in my ears—the same earrings I’m wearing now, actually, which are the first gift Chris ever gave me, for my birthday a month and a half after we met. My fingernails are painted a pale purple, and my hair is pushed back over my ears, held in place by the silver arms of a pair of sunglasses—an old pair of Christian’s aviators. Henry is wearing a tank top/shorts romper, gray with red and white pinstripes down the sides and a koala embroidered on the chest. Henry has a red pacifier in his left hand, blurred into a pinkish smear.

I remember taking the selfie, and I also I remember that within seconds of snapping that selfie, he started fussing and crying, and shoved the binky into his mouth, his forehead wrinkled in pain. But in the moment of the photograph, he was so full of joy, so happy just to be taking a picture with Mommy. And I, in turn, was just as happy and joyful, in that moment.

After, as the fussiness took him, worry replaced joy. Panic replaced happiness.

But for that moment, I was blissfully joyful.

I remember lying there in bed for days—for weeks—staring at that photo, trying to remember what it was like to be that happy.

I wish I knew, even now.

I climbed into bed, and I stayed there. Christian would come in and sit on the bed, and murmur to me. Tell me he loved me. Try to get me to sit up. To eat something. To say something.

I couldn’t.

I remember it all. I remember being utterly unable to so much as form a sound—my grief was just so HEAVY, an elephant sitting on my chest, crushing me, pinning me. I couldn’t breathe. I’d lie there, and I’d be barely able to draw a breath. Because, if I drew too deep a breath, I’d start sobbing and I’d never stop. I’d drown in sorrow. So I just remained still. Wishing I could die, wanting to just fade away.

I felt each individual moment and sensation with crystal clarity. I felt the hunger pangs, the thirst. Headaches. Withdrawal from caffeine. Stiffness, soreness. Pressure on my bladder or bowels. I felt it all; I just felt the sorrow and the grief more acutely, and those utterly buried and dwarfed the rest. Nothing mattered except that Henry was dead.

It crushed me.

It shattered me.

I’d buried myself in that little box. Christian, with that handful of Florida dirt, had interred me in the ground along with Henry.

I remember too the desperation in Christian’s voice. The way he would plead with me. Beg me. Bring tray after tray of food.

I remember the anger, so vividly. It was an inferno inside me, consuming me.

I stared at the photograph and thought back over each moment when I’d KNOWN deep down something was wrong with Henry and had chalked it up to fussiness or colic or something else. I blamed myself for not realizing. For not bringing him to the doctor sooner. If I’d found out sooner that he had a tumor, maybe they could have done something to save him. I felt anger at Christian for not insisting we get him checked, for thinking I was paranoid. Anger at Christian for not protecting our son. In the twisted snarl of grief and sorrow and anger inside me, I managed to blame Christian.

I lay in bed and I stared at the photo and I slept and I fought tears and I fed on the anger, and ignored the hollow hunger in my stomach. All I had within me was anger. I heard his words and felt nothing, only anger. Only rage. Only sorrow. Only grief. But it was all mixed up and twisted and wrong.

Who was I really angry at? Myself? Him? The world? God? Everything?

Rage was such a wildfire inside me, so full of fury and hate and sorrow, that I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. There’s no way to put what I was feeling into such a paltry, mortal, intangible thing as mere words. Things like SORROW, and RAGE, and ANGER, and GRIEF…they’re just words. They don’t—can’t—encompass what it feels like to watch your helpless infant son suffer such awful torture, watch him sicken and die and know there’s not a single goddamn thing you can do to even ease the pain. You can give him drugs, but only so much, because those’ll kill him too.

You can only watch as he suffers. You can’t suffer with him, you can’t take it from him, and you can’t die in his place—you would, in a heartbeat.

You would suffer all the evils this world has to offer if only he could be spared this hell.

But it doesn’t work like that. And so, he dies.

Yeah, that’ll make you angry. But how do you put that into words? How do you describe what you feel in the moment the monitor goes flatline and you know he’s gone, your son, your baby is fucking GONE?

You don’t.

You just…die inside.

I’d been scooped hollow—I remember reading that phrase somewhere, used to describe the grief at losing a loved one, and it is absolutely accurate. Everything that was me had been ripped away and scraped away, leaving nothing in its place.

That creature lying in that bed, staring at that photograph? It wasn’t me, that wasn’t Ava St. Pierre. It was…a THING. A void.

There was nothing inside me. That’s why I was so unresponsive—I wasn’t me anymore. I’d been tortured into madness.

But now?

Now I hear Christian’s voice.

I hear the pain, the agony.

I hear the grief.

He’d suffered through everything I had.

Not only that, but he’d had to watch me starve myself. He’d lost his son and his wife at the same time. And he had suffered this alone.

I did that to him.

I’d twisted the knife in his heart, and then sprinkled salt on the wound.

I’d abandoned him when he needed me most.

No wonder he left me.