The Cascade.

I found the place where the souls of unborn children go.

How can you dream of a place you have never been?

Possibly it was imprinted from gathering route data and forming bucket list excursions but this was more than that.

The earth was trying to swallow me.

It’s doubled me over.

What was this?

Face twisted, hands in a primal claw ripping at my chest.

Nothing. No sound. No tears.

I could feel myself dying.

This is what it feels like to die from pain.

Hollow empty nothingness.

A place beyond where our bodies can participate in grief.

I felt the place that even tears won’t go.

I felt the pain from the loss of our child, my sister and grandparents. The pain of my friends and family.

I felt all the pain through loss all at once.

Not muddy all at once but with layers.

Beautifully constructed layers of abject torrential pain that only our human hearts can endure.

Then survival.

I am not breathing.

Then breathe.

Prana.

Rasping reminders that this too can be survived.

I sat for hours or moments.

Doesn’t matter.

Heaving the grief and pain of a mother without her child.

Feeing my mother’s pain.

My grandmothers.

We are all our mothers.

Ancestral and genetic.

The pain centered in my womb.

Exactly as it should be.

Genetic material of 3 generations in my ovaries ready and willing to try again.

If my mother cannot face this pain I will do it for her.

I forgive her.

We are all our mothers.

We are not their stories.

As I made my way to the bottom I slithered into the shadows and behind trees.

I was exposed.

I had no callous, no protection.

No one look at me. I am naked.

My viscera open.

I picked my way through Boulder fields towards water.

I moved with urgency seeking her help.

I needed to wash myself.

The place where the tiny souls go is temporary.

Not to reside but to visit.

To be shown the spectacle of Creation.

God lets them see what they are a part of.

They are the composers of an introduction.

Part of the book even though they didn’t get to have their stories.

The lake is the final place where the little souls go.

They cascade down being able to enjoy for just a moment the joy of childhood.

Then the Creator collects them.

But they are not sad.

Children are hope so how could they be.

I stripped down.

Even removing my wedding ring.

I jumped in.

Cold water.

Heavy breaths. Labor breathing, slow controlled and methodical.

Naked I jumped into this turquoise receptacle of tiny souls.

I prayed to be washed clean of the pain.

Instantly I wanted to vomit, defecate, urinate and bleed.

She wanted me to purge.

It hurt so much.

She took it.

Always restorative.

Never asking anything from me.

No questions just waters of forgiveness and love.

Maybe today was because I keep pretending this is a chapter in my life.

Life and death are not chapters.

They are the actual framework for our story.

There is no story without it.

We are not human without it.

We can only be authors of the chapters.

The in between things.

I choose to write mine with love.

From a place of an endless wilderness of love.

The tiny souls now reside with the Creator.

Their energy dispersed into raindrops coalescing into rainbows.

Tiny pieces of what could have been.

Blonde curls, sticky hands and dirty feet.

I ran.

Out of the wilderness and toward a tiny soul that I can hold in my arms.

The other I just hold in my heart.

- J

ASGARD