How Will I Now?

If one ever gets to check the limits of their imagination, try to imagine what it might be like to be living without any thought of a tomorrow.

All of us, naturally, live our todays for something to look forward to tomorrow. Every day we spend unconscious moments and thoughts planning about a time in the near or far future. And that is what drives humans through, to do tasks and work, striving for a future or merely even a tomorrow that is better than today, or as they wish it to be. This is what is driving the world and life on Earth.

But I know, some merely survive each day, in the wait for a day that could bring back, or at least take them to that reason which made their life, if nothing more, but normal. Yes, a normal life is defined as the constant striving to make tomorrow better than today or yesterday. And nothing normal exists for parents whose little child has passed. Because there is nothing in this life that will ever make their tomorrow better than their yesterday.

A yesterday where their life was complete, where they knew what was happy, where they wished, where they hoped, and where they saw a future right in front of their eyes. If today lands so brutally to erase a future, a breath, a happiness, a heartbeat, then there is no wish or hope for anything left at all. Nothing ever will make any part of the future desirable.

For me, the only thoughts that take over are about 'How will I now?'

The Constant Question: How Will I Now?

This constant question now rules the remainder of this life. How will I now do what I am supposed to do? I was supposed to be preparing for a comfortable life for the two sisters I am raising. How will I now? I am supposed to be a toddler mum, planning with a million thoughts around healthy food options, play times, social engagements, learning tools, settling sibling disputes, clean clothes, and a liveable house with toys not bruising the feet at unexpected places. What do I do with these thoughts, this mindset, this heart that knows this rhythm? How will I slow it down to think about the child here, who is now facing the silence she might not even comprehend? How can I explain this shift so damagingly permanent to a sister who is yet to understand what death means? How am I to continue threading light and hope in this child's heart when I have lost every shred of hope myself?

The Challenge of Acceptance

Is it even humanely possible to accept the absence of one of your children? Absence of the sort where you know, in your sanity, the constancy and continuance of this?

One might even start getting used to the absence of a family member, but this getting used to brings in a feeling of extreme sickness. A deep, tearing, piercing, hurtful dagger that shreds your insides. The mother in you never gets used to the fact of her child not being able to live their life. The parent in you is constantly aware of the reality that one of our child did not see this world, did not get what everyone else has, and did not get a chance to grow up.

Living with Uncertainty

So, there is never getting used to, ever. But the 'how will I now', remains ever persistent. Going about each day carrying this is scary. Scary because the extent of uncertainty is now exposed to us. The veil that depicted a beauty, a hope, and a yearning for life has lifted. Now, it is just trying to hold the pieces together towards the end of the day. Now, it is simply trying to tell your other child to try today so that if tomorrow comes, it's worth trying again.

We don't usually realise how these little lives become the biggest reasons that are driving the world around us. Mine didn't get to see her tomorrows, but she is ever present in every day that we live, and this life will ever remain indebted to so many such little ones that did not get their share of tomorrows.

A Broken Heart

The broken heart, if you ever get close to imagining as I asked, has become the tip of the huge mountain of 'how will I now'.

I heard a fellow bereaved mum describe a braid as the perfect metaphor for what life becomes after the event of a child's death.

Forever, a braid where the happy yesterdays are braided with the incomplete todays and empty tomorrows. Wherever there are moments that come up about tomorrow, the braided yesterday is ever-present. That is how it is now. That is, how I might be able to accept it.

How will I now know what I am to do with what happened to my life? Simply, braid it and hold it all in.