The Vigil
I did not lose you all at once.
There was no single day the world split apart and took you from my arms.
Instead, you disappeared by inches.
First your laughter thinned like winter light fading behind bare trees.
Then your eyes stopped resting on mine the way they once did when the world was simple and my hand could still guide you across the road.
Something else began to walk beside you a shadow I could not see, but I could feel.
It spoke louder than I could. It held you tighter than I could. It promised you things I never would.
I spoke your name across a growing distance. I made meals for you long after you stopped eating them.
And I watched, helpless as the space between us widened. Not from lack of love but from something stronger than love, pulling you away.
But addiction is a quiet thief.
It does not steal the child all at once.
It steals their mornings, their promises, their future, piece by piece.
And mothers are left standing in the doorway of memory holding only photographs and remembering the sound of their child's laughter echoing through a house that has grown too quiet.
Yet, still,
Somewhere beneath the shadow I know you are there. The boy who ran in our garden who once placed his small hand in mine, as if I were his entire world.
And so I keep a light burning. Not because I know you will find your way back, but because a mother's love is the one thing that addiction has never been able to take.
- Geraldine Fay
