Imagining.

Words I've been trying to find since Wally’s funeral. This is for him, his mother, and any parent whose love reaches beyond this life.

People say,
I can’t imagine,
their voices soft,
as if imagining itself
might be a cruelty.

We’ve all said it at times,
hoping to be kind,
wishing not to trespass
on a pain too sacred to touch.

The thought lingers,
then gently passes,
like a cloud
that never plans to rain.

But there are those who can imagine. 
Who do imagine. 
Day after day. 
Hour after hour. 
Breath after breath. 

We imagine it in grocery store aisles,
at the gas pump,
during hold music,
in the middle of washing our hair.

We imagine it in the space between conversation,
in the stillness before sleep
and the first moments of waking.

We can imagine because
we have stood beside our sister
as she did the unthinkable. 

We imagine her returning the gear.
Monitors unplugged.
Tubes coiled back into boxes.

We imagine the car seat
still buckled in.
How long will it stay there?
Until it hurts too much,
or until it might hurt less?

We imagine colorful Velcro shoes
left in a basket by the door,
We imagine her favorite book
that suddenly stops mid-sentence.

We imagine to the fullest extent that we are able 
because love
does not look away.

We are not Wally’s mother.
We do not know the last time she trimmed his nails, 
or the sweetness of the sound 
when he called for her after a nap.

But we stood close enough
to feel the echo of her love.
To glimpse how a mother’s world can shatter
while the rest of the world
keeps spinning, careless and loud.

To an extent, we can imagine
because this is not abstract to us. 
Grief lives in our bodies,
beats in our chests,
sits with us
every hour of our lives.

We can imagine because this is
what our version of motherhood does:
it keeps loving,
keeps moving forward,
while counting time differently,
and looking straight at the unbearable.

Our version of motherhood means
holding a joy that burns bright, 
while walking beside a shadow
that never fully leaves. 

And yet, we can only imagine.
And yes, we too are a cliché.

What she carries now
is heavier than imagining.
What she carries is a love shaped exactly for Wally,
with nowhere obvious to land.
Hands remembering
the warmth of squishy fingers.
Her cheek remembering
the tickle of duck-fluff hair.

She is forever a part of the 
circle of mothers 
whose love has learned 
the language of machines,
of waiting rooms,
of hope delicately held like glass.

We do not borrow her grief.
We would never claim it as our own. 
But we can sit beside it.
We can cherish the photos.
We can say his name with care.

So, when we stand at a small grave
and our knees threaten to give,
it is not pity that breaks us open.

It is recognition.

It is witnessing the depth of a mother’s love. 

We stand in different moments of grief.
Some of us imagining when.
She, living among the mothers who know after.

And we are here with her,
always remembering perfect Wally,
always imagining.