Chronology Flipped
How does a parent live, after watching their child die?
How do they breathe the next moment? The next hour? The next day?
Do they want to stay awake all night, so they don’t need to experience the first morning of waking up without their child?
Not drink their first coffee?
Not eat their first meal?
Without them. Without their child. Their own flesh and blood who they watched grow and develop and learn the alphabet and make friends.
Who they taught to walk and speak and read and write.
Who they took to the dentist and held their hand while they got their first filling.
Who they watched grow, and experience love and heartbreak.
Who they took to the movies and clothes shopping and visits to new babies.
Who they took to the doctors, then hospital, then ICU and back home again.
Who they sat beside while a diagnosis was given, with no clear answers or plan to follow.
Who they walked the unknown with. Faithfully getting up day after day to pour love, encouragement and care into this child of theirs.
Who they watched decline over time, then improve, then decline. A vicious, yet remarkable cycle of courage and determination.
Who they spent the day with, not knowing it would be the last. Of all the days, they didn’t know it would be this one.
Nothing could prepare them.
Nothing could explain the pain of watching them go.
Nothing could make those moments easier.
Nothing could help or explain the earth-shattering, soul-breaking, surreal and rawest pain that they had ever felt.
Because this child of theirs, who they loved so incredibly deeply, just died before them.
Chronology flipped.
The logic of time and reason obliterated.
The rules of life defiled.