I Need More Words

 I was the woman with babies and children.  My own babies, her children, your babies, their children. I held them and loved them, put them down for naps, changed their diapers.  I sang to them and read to them and played with them and wiped their tears. I took them to the park, the library, the pool, the store, drs appointments (mine, theirs, ours), and gave them rides here, there, anywhere - my kids and your kids and their kids.

And then, I guess you know what happened next, it's the most basic storyline of all, they grew up. My house emptied out. And do you know how many ghosts haunt a home empty of children? Your children stopped coming over, and my children left too.  Backpacks with lunches and homework and little pieces of me walk out the door every morning, and 

I realized one day that I had died.  That the woman I had been was gone.  But it wasn't a physical death, or even an emotional death, and I'm not sure there is a word to describe this kind of death. Maybe in all my wide open hours I can study the dictionary and find one.

You could argue that I didn't die, I just changed -- except that I did not change. The shape and sounds of my life changed, the smells and stickiness of my life changed, but I did not change. I did not change, but I was gone. So I say it felt like some kind of death, some kind of death that I died over and over every day when they tied their own shoes and put on their own coats and every night when they read their own bedtime stories and brushed their own teeth.

It is, obviously, the very best kind of death, full of joy and excitement and pride in accomplishments. The very best kind and I usually don't cry in the store anymore, locked frozen in the baby aisle.