Loving Avonte

I don't want to write this. I don't want to do anything but go back to bed...as though I have any "right" to be in such agony.  But I can't help it, so why even try.

They think they may have found this boy's remains, after months of hoping all would be well.

All I can come up with as an explanation for this despair that's all but doubling me over is that it's for all of us. For all us mothers who live with the shadow of fear of having to go through what Avonte's mother has gone through. For all of us who have survived the near misses, and for her and all the others who may be surviving the worst of all possible outcomes.

The spiritual reality I live in says that all minds are joined. Since this is true, then on some level this mother and all the other mothers can feel the unending love I have for them and their babies. They can feel the comfort, the healing, that I wish for them with all of my being...somehow...some way. You can add your unspeakably powerful thoughts to mine, and there's no telling the mountains we can move,,.mountains of grief...a thousand oceans of tears. We can do this for them. It costs us nothing. 

For Avonte's mother, I pray so hard that you feel your joyously free and everloving boy next to you always, forever, in a world without end, closer than your own breath and heartbeat, because I know that's where he is. Don't ask me how I know. I know. If I didn't, I don't think I could go on functioning.

I have to pull myself together now and go on doing the job that's mine to do. Mothering autism and all that goes with it. It's the greatest, most awesome gift I could have ever not seen coming. I thought I already knew that, but I may not have fully gotten it until today. Right this second..

Think the highest thoughts today, all the love in the world, in all the worlds. Picture that boy in the light as hard as you can. It's where he's always lived, and where he always will. No matter what the evidence from the water ends up telling us. Whether this boy has moved on to his next adventure, or is still somehow dwelling in ours, love him like he's your own. 

Because he is.