"Spasm! Spasm!"

So Meg Ryan says to Kevin Kline while in the throes of lactose intolerance in "French Kiss," one of my most-watched videos.

I recall those words often these days, though in a somewhat different context. As a bereaved mother I am subject to a phenomenon described as "grief spasms" in the literature.

What i would give to have never learned of a spasm worse than those caused by lactose intolerance.

While at pool on Tuesday i took a walk around the block between games. About a half block from the apartment where i raised my children from 1987 to 1995 it hit: oh, GAWD! she's dead, that's forever, Bekah! Bekah? All the serenity ever affected by any bereft mother, shown up for an act.

Because it's Oh gawd! never going to change. All the desperate heroic efforts of any mother to save her child, no, not one will save this child. This child has passed. Desolation fills the senses, a memory of the day she was born bubbles up like oil from a well. But it's just a tease, just a mirage of comfort when all that can comfort the bereft mother is all she can not have.


Bekah at the Light

Not ever, not ever again in this life.

Sometimes I'm almost there [i.e., recovery]. During a grief spasm it is once again July 20, .2001 and I am just learning that Bekah's been killed. But as the news hits today, I no longer have the insulation of shock that spared me this intensity in the first months.

Today the news hits in waves containing every detail of every moment she has missed and will miss. It is a life, the life of my daughter. I love my daughter the most of anyone and how much I love her is unprecedented in my life, excepting her brothers, nephews, and sister-in-law.

Every minute, every day, every passing milestone she misses congregates inside me and assails me as i walk. This spasm comes on me and nearly buckles my knees it is so enervating. Aloud I say, "Baby girl!" and tears spring out of my eyes. I am staggered one more time by Bekah's death, more than a year later. oh gawd! she's dead....


Bekah, a giant of a girl! :

- posted by barbara @ 8/17/2002 09:30:00 PM