Yesterday I Reached The Horizon Line.

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From conception to birth takes nine months. Exactly that many months ago my oldest came home to me, to be nurtured back to health. Yesterday I sent him into the world - into life. It has been nine months of tears and fears, gains and losses, joys and sorrows, war and peace, and pain and laughter. For nine months I externalized my mother's heart and hid the simpler heart that is just me. On the way home from the airport it began to rain - from the sky, from my eyes, and something deep inside of me splintered and dropped away from my guarded soul. The highway ribboned ahead of me, undulating toward the horizon line that beckoned me home. Home. The stillness, the absence, the absolute quiet that bespeaks the lack of life. And then I heard it. A low, deep keening. The sound of grief. I thought it was coming from me. I followed the sound to my son's room and fell upon the bed, the tears still streaming from my eyes. The keening stopped and I felt a cold wet nose nudging my cheek. My dog - our dog, was on his bed, where she was never allowed to be. Her sense of loss, of knowing that he was gone, had led her there, to be as close to his scent, his essence, as possible. I curled into her, turned my face into her silken hair and cried out every tear that I had withheld for nine months. Tears of denial, abject fear, anger, pain and acceptance. I relived every moment of the last nine months with every tear that I shed. That cold wet nose rested on my shoulder and when I was done, she lifted her head, looked into my eyes and together we relaxed into sleep. This morning the house was quiet, but no longer empty. The sense of loss has been replaced with an awareness of life still to be lived - ABLE to be lived, because of the success of the last nine months. Yesterday I reached the horizon line. Today I know what lies on the other side. My dog has not left my side, but in time she will separate from me when she comes to understand that I will not leave her. In every tear a mother sheds, there is love. My tears today have been the quiet tears of missing someone greatly loved, but also a release of that love back to independance, and the pain is gone. The fear of his disease returning will be with us both until the end of our days, but it will not rule us, or mar the joy of exploring, what lies on the other side of the horizon line.