A Mother's Heart

Today we laid to rest one of our youth, 21 years old, talented, passionate, and smart. Gui Sobral. His smile has graced our lives, his energy contagious. The only son of dedicated and loving parents, killed in a twisted car crash a week ago. And for the first time in my life, I felt something new, something unexplainable, something so much bigger then myself.
I watched as his mother supported by someone on each side stepped up to read a poem she had written, the kind of raw emotion, grief, loss, pain…the stricken look of devastation, of lost expectations, of memories, of love. I watched as childhood pictures flickered across the screens, simple pictures to us, but to his parents, parts of their lives, parts of everything that he had been. Glimpses into a lifetime of love. And I saw her anguish and something intensely foreign began to well inside of me.
I have to be honest; I haven’t felt attached to this pregnancy. I’ve felt invaded, taken over, not in control. I’ve resented the days and nights of sickness, the limitations, the tiredness, I’ve felt claustrophobic and trapped. I’ve laid awake at night and wondered if somehow I’m missing some vital mothering instinct that is supposed to be apparent in all females. I’ve heard those around me who are pregnant, gush about their feelings of passionate love for their unborn, their excitement, that glow. And I’ve been jealous of it. Worried really. People have asked me everyday how excited I am, and I’ve answered with caution and a simple smile…”I’m getting there” when in reality, I feel very far from it.
But today, I sat there…in that pew and an emotion started to well from within the very depths of my being, a understanding, an agony. As I felt the kicks of my own children, and heard the wail of a mother who had lost hers, I felt it…what must be, has to be, a mothers heart. Nothing so intense, nothing so clear, nothing so pure in feeling , in emotion, has ever overcome me. I had to hold on to the seat, literally, to keep from rushing to a woman I don’t even know, to grasp her to me, to weep with her, to hold her in her loss, to help feel a pain I am now only beginning to understand. And in that moment, I loved my children, they are not just what lives inside of me, but they are why I live. I will be from this moment on, always a mother. They are mine, a part of myself, my responsibility, my inspiration, my motivation, my heart.
They lower Gui into the ground, and as they do, my babies kick. And I feel a holy fear of the sense of protectiveness I feel for these unborn children of mine. A complete abandon of any sense of sacrifice to big or to great for those that I call my own. There is nothing, nothing, that would be to big, or too much for me to give or do, to protect them, to uphold them, to see them succeed, to see them live fulfilled and happy, to have them understand my love. There is nothing that I could even call a sacrifice, because it is what I want to do. Because today…I am a mother.