There are no words. No mother, no human being, should ever have to lay eyes upon their dead child. The need to be with my son, to help him, to make sure he was ok, was overwhelming. A complete rupture to my psyche. I was thrust into immobilizing fog with no order, no clarity. The sorrow and trauma across my daughter’s faces shattered my heart. Such fear and worry for them. Our lives forever changed. From the very moment that my brain processed the delivered words “Jason has died”, my world spun right off it’s axis. ‘I’ was no more. The extreme anguish that Jason was alone took me to the very edge. I plummeted to such depths of despair beyond any conscious thought. Beyond grief. Into darkness. Isolated. Amputated. Fear. The death of one’s child is a prison. No escape.

Crippled by a feeling of insanity, my mind desperately clung to familiar sounds: the squeaking and crunching of snow under my boots; the grinding and scraping of cleats meeting the lurking ice; the rustling and swishing of snow pants as my legs mysteriously carried me towards the barn. Upon recognizing these sounds there was a moment of self-awareness bringing me temporarily out of the distorted and detached realm that I now existed in. I was no longer part of this world. Feeling as if I was a visitor stuck in between planes of life hovering above the earth. Alone, stripped, raw, soul searching for soul.

Swish-right, swish-left. I see my feet and legs moving beneath me, disappearing and then reappearing, but yet I don’t feel them. The sense is that they are not attached to me. Frightening. I know that I am walking, I see my boot prints. I feel like I am going crazy. Dragging my body from my bed to the barns where daunting chores awaited me, seemed unattainable. Such fatigue. I felt like I was encased in cement. I can’t survive one more second; the second somehow passes. Then it hits, the shocking jolt revisits with such force and speed landing right into the pit of my stomach. A mournful sound comes up my throat. Stomach queasy, mind spinning. Soul-deep yearning. Searing sorrow. My body halts half way to the barns. I don’t feel well. My legs are weak. I am lightheaded. A huge wave of sadness crescendos; I can’t breathe, I am choking, I can’t swallow. There is a huge lump blocking my throat. The weight on my back now getting heavier crushing and caving my chest in. Fainting felt eminent. I knew it would be unsafe in this -32C temperature but part of me was willing to fall into the bleak hands of winter. Thinking of my girls made me fight. Reaching deep, I stood up tall and thrust my chin up to the sky enabling me to finally swallow and breathe.

Upon reaching the barn I set my sight on the hog wire partition. Fighting against a collapse I wrapped my heavily gloved hands securely around the metal bars and let my body go limp. A persistent agonizing ache ran through my legs, arms, chest, back, ribs, teeth, face, like a bad flu. Somehow I eventually was able to summon up just enough energy to perform the next task at hand.

Slowly walking back, looking towards the house, everything started to spin. I became sick to my stomach. No sign of any life. No face at the window. Everything grey. I open the door. One foot in. Empty. Silent. No Jason. A primal guttural sound breaks the silence as I fall to my knees.

Nothing could give me the slightest relief from this raging pain and sorrow until the day I lay down on a yoga mat.