Two mothers speak of the friend who has just lost her son in a most senseless act. Eyes brim weepy as a son’s life has ended, as a mother’s life fades grey.

How does a mother reason with a son gone, a life of future cut short without cause?

Weeps seep from eye sockets.

The friends lift their glasses and sip at the Shiraz, eager to wash down emotions that clog their throats. How do a mother and father ever come to terms with such loss? And his siblings?

Hearts shatter into the tiniest, minuscule of fragments, strewn beyond collection.

To lose a son is one thing, but to lose him at the mercy of another, after going out with friends one night, is unfathomable. Chased, and slain.

Buttery river rapids churn through a bottomless, vast chasm that is my gut.

I remember holding my son and catching a whiff of his musk cologne as we danced together the night before, our first dance as mother and young man. Emotions catch in my throat again.

Our friend and mother won’t have those opportunities. No more first-times, family dinners and holidays together, nor kisses hello. I swallow hard as my eyelashes soak in sadness. I think of my son again, who will walk home from a friend’s party tonight.

Weepy eyes, and buttery rapids dive down and around in that vast chasm, smashing into hardened cliffs and bouncing into inside ethers.

This senseless act has set a hardened, cement path in a family’s life that they could never have imagined, one that will never be removed no matter how hard any jackhammer can attempt to drill at it.

As my friend speaks to me, I notice speckled salt spots on the glass of my spectacles. I pick a tissue and rub them clean. Being a mother, I cannot help but think of that mother, what she must be feeling. I will never understand. Selfishly, I never want to.

Tagged: #empathy, broken heart, death, father, Mother, remember, remembered, shattered heart, siblings, son