Potential

Potential

I Never thought about you as potential.
I had you.
I thought of you.
As doing, As being
As Always.
Here.
Here after me.
Here with your own family.
Here loving ME.
Here being MY friend.
Here being MY son.

You never felt like potential before.
Not potential, a real person.
You just felt like a loving, sweet, funny, beautiful and caring son. Our son.

Now all we have are these torturous thoughts of what you might have done and
what we might have been with you here by our side.

Dreams of you
Riding your bike without training wheels.
Reading us a story.
Writing a love notes to us.
Learning Spanish by the third grade.
Perhaps stumbling & struggling as a teenager.
Your first heart break.
Finding true love.
Finding the joy and beauty of being a father.
Passing on your wisdoms to your own children.

These are the big potentials. What about all the little moments in between?

The potential for just holding your hand and kissing your lips and reading you a bedtime story and talking to you about the world and taking you to new places, and being your best mommy ever. What about all these potentials?

Your potential
Gone
What you might have been
Is trapped in our minds.
Along with a thousand other wishes
We imagine and dream and torture ourselves with all the things you would have done.

What of our potential?
Our potential, is gone.
Who knows what WE might have been with you by our side.
It felt like together we could have conquered anything, done anything and been anything.
But now all we can be are the grieving parents of someone who’s gone
With so much potential

Mercilessly,
We’ll be forced to hang on
As flesh and blood beings.
Molecules moving at the perfect rate
To keep us breathing, walking and thinking
About you.
Your potential.
What you would have done.

What we would have done with you.
To help build what you would have done.

Your education.
Your interests.
Your career.
Your relationships.
Your children.
Your learning about life.
Your giving to life.
Your being Life.
Our Life.

Without you.
Nothing.
No potential.

*****

By Elene Bratton
Jamie’s Mom
June 3, 2002

Copyright 2002 Elene Bratton

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