I listened to a podcast while painting this piece
and some zoologist from Kentucky said that
Elephants mourn their dead.
Not the way we do,
with casseroles and folded chairs
and someone’s uncle saying “she’s in a better place,”
while the room keeps proving
there are worse places than grief.
The man said they come back to the bones.
They stop and they gather.
They touch the bones of the ones who came before them,
and they touch the bones of the ones who came from them.
The elephants lower themselves
to the skull,
the rib,
the long white bone the sun
has polished into a relic,
and they tenderly caress what’s left
like they are reading braille from the hand of God.
Here, the forehead.
Here, the jaw.
Here, the place where breath once made a home.
Here, the map of a face
the world had the nerve to turn into weather.
They touch all the bones,
and they do this with their trunks,
which is to say they do this with the part of them
made for breathing,
for reaching,
for lifting water to the mouth,
for calling across distances,
for saying, I know you even now.
Tell me that is not motherhood.
Tell me that motherhood is not
the longest yes a person can become.
Tell me it is not loving someone through
every shape the world makes of them:
the baby curled like a comma beneath the heart,
the toddler with thunder in the knees and God in their laugh,
the teenager slamming the door
like a judge who has never been wrong,
the grown child driving away with
too much music,
too little sleep,
and an entire childhood rattling loose in the trunk.
A mother is a keeper and carrier of it all.
Ask her. She’ll tell you.
Ask any mother what it means
to be a museum with no closing hours,
and she will show you the first cry stored in the attic of her ribs.
She will show you the the milk-drunk grin,
the fevered forehead,
the mitten without its twin.
She will guide you through the day they were born
and every day they were almost taken.
She will tell you about the sound of her baby’s laugh
that she keeps like an emergency candle
for the nights the power goes out inside her.
Ask any mother and she’ll tell you.
Ask the one who still folds small socks
even after the feet have become boats.
Ask the one who hears a key in the door
even after the child has moved three states away.
Ask the ones who lost the baby.
Ask the ones who never got to hold the baby.
Ask the ones whose child no longer calls.
Ask the ones whose kid never leaves.
Ask the ones who keep loving anyway,
that terrible, radiant anyway
that always has blood in the mouth.
Ask them what it’s like to touch the bones,
but don’t ever tell her to stop.
Don’t ever tell her to let it go.
She has let go enough already:
of the stroller,
the crib,
the school drop-off line,
the tiny dinosaur pajamas,
the lunchbox notes,
the voice before it changed,
the bedroom before it became a shrine
or a storage room or a door she cannot open.
She has let go of more than most people
will ever be asked to hold.
And still, the child stays.
Not carried anymore on the hip,
but there all the same in the limp.
In the way she pauses at the edge of a room.
In the way her arm still reaches across the car
when she brakes too fast.
In the way she hears a laugh in the grocery store
and turns around before remembering
the world has been cruel with its echoes.
In the way she keeps forgetting
that some doors only open in memory.
The Kentucky man said that elephants return to the bones
and maybe this is what love is like after loss:
it’s not the letting go everyone keeps recommending,
but the learning how to touch what remains
without asking it to become less gone.
I could be wrong, of course— it wouldn’t be the first time,
but I am increasingly convinced
that grief is not the opposite of living
and that mourning is just love refusing
to become fluent in goodbye.
So on this Mother’s Day Week,
I bless the mothers who return to the bones.
The ones who tenderly gather the pieces of what was,
without needing to to beg them back
or make the gone less gone
or stitch breath back into the mouth.
But just to say: I know you, even now.
I would know you anywhere.
I would know you
as dust.
As echo.
As hospital light.
As the last sock left in the drawer.
I would know you
by the ache
that rearranged my body
into a chapel
with no doors.
And I will continue to know you
and love you through every translation.
from baby into boy,
boy into man,
man into silence,
silence into birthday,
birthday into knife,
knife into candle,
candle into smoke,
smoke into the prayer
I keep quiet so that the windows don’t shatter.
Bless the mothers
who have learned to walk with a coffin in their chest
and still make breakfast in the morning.
Bless the mothers who still sit across the table
from the miracle and remember not to call it ordinary.
Bless the mothers who are still here touching the bones
of what was,
what might have been,
what should have stayed.
Bless the mothers like mine
who loved the child through every wreckage,
every exile,
every dark translation,
who kept saying,
Come here, beloved,
even when the beloved
had become the storm.
Bless the mothers
who stand in the ash
with their hands full of names
and say:
This was mine.
This is mine.
This will always be mine.
Every version.
Every fragment.
Every breath.
Every bone.
Mine in the beginning.
Mine in the becoming.
Mine beyond the end.

"Bless the Mothers" Print
• 1.25″ (3.18 cm) thick poly-cotton blend canvas
• Canvas fabric weight: 10.15 +/- 0.74 oz./yd.² (344 g/m² +/- 25g/m²)
• Fade-resistant
• Hand-stretched over solid wood stretcher bars
• Mounting brackets included
• Blank product sourced from the US, Canada, Europe, UK, or Australia

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