24 longs years without my son Jamie
24 years ago seems so far away and like yesterday
We got ready me for work and you for school
You still help getting it all together, helped you dress ate breakfast with daddy, we said our prayers ad were off
I drove you to the alley entrance to drops you off with Goya’s. She would walk you to the bus stop each morning
The oink was in your eyes- you bent backwards on to my lap while I sent in the car and dropped liquid into your eyes.
How was I to know I’d never hold you again
That that would be the night I would walk into the hospital room and seeing could only same right out loud “He’s not here”
And now you’re everywhere
An exact month before your 6th birthday
Today an exact month before your 30th birthday
The son has shone for 24 years as Jamie’s joy, but not as Jamie the son of Elene and Mychael
While the animal noises, the wailing and gnashing of teeth have subsided
The lingering of grief, the profound missing, the hole that cannot be filled persists
It is as another bereaved parent said “like trying to fill the Grand Canyon with and eyedropper
And always will until we are both on the same plane again, where there is no separation
©Elene Bratton, 2026