Two days ago, I met my friend for breakfast. We became friends when we were young and didn’t know about life, but thought we did. We were friends when our bodies bounced back after pushing our sons into the world. We were friends when we rolled our eyes at older people when they talked about their aches, pains, and doctor’s appointments, like magically, somehow, we would be the only two on Earth that time wouldn’t catch up with. We were friends before life gave us the greatest gifts that burst us with excitement, and we were friends when life took those same things away.
Our sons passed away four years apart from drug overdoses. Her son left first, and I pulled my son closer, thinking that would help—that somehow, I had that kind of power.
After we exchange the things friends do when they meet for lunch—we hug, tell each other how good we look, say “did you lose weight,” talk about diet, and the crepey skin that just showed up out of nowhere. We compare aches, pains, and doctor’s appointments. After a second of silence, we connect with eyes that understand, the thing that can be compared to nothing. Can’t be, because the pain we feel tears us open from the inside, strips us of our organs, our bones, and our minds. It squeezes our hearts until they fly like shrapnel so far from us that we can’t ever get it back. We live that way, looking for something that we won’t find.
“Sometimes I find it difficult to smile,” she says.
“Me too. Smiling feels like a betrayal.”
“The sad part is our boys would tell us that it isn’t.” We agree that both of our sons would want us happy, and not the fragmented remains of our lives from before.
“I found this new neck cream.” She tells me that her neck looks old, but I don’t see it.
“Your forehead looks good,” she says.
“Botox. I get it for my migraines, and the doctor sneaks a little in the line between my eyes.”
“Lucky.” We laugh at the absurdity.
We talk about our grief, and how difficult it is to hide, because it’s bigger than us. We can’t control it. We can’t bring our sons back. How does a mother ever accept that?
“I try and hide the grief by smiling, but it doesn’t stay,” she says.
“Grief comes when it wants.” In the past year, I have tried with all I have to run from it, but it always finds me—always.
“I’m getting frown lines,” she says.
“They come for everyone; you live long enough.”
“True.” We think maybe there is a cream for the lines around the mouth, but all I find on my phone, when I look it up, is to cut open the face and pull it back. We are not willing to go to those lengths. I narrow my search to non-invasive treatments for the lines lengthening and deepening heavy on our faces.
“I found something.”
“What is it?” She leans forward, like I am about to give her the answers to the universe.
“Smile.”
“What?”
“Says right here that smiling lifts the lines.”
“Great. I’ll get on that.” We laugh at the absurdity. To smile all the time feels like a betrayal to our sons, keeping us from showing the grief that shreds our insides. Smiling tucks that all away, so we can disguise ourselves as citizens in a world where we no longer belong.
“What if we stopped caring?” I ask her.
“Stop caring?”
“Yeah. Like what if we just let ourselves be. Let our knuckles grow and our fingers twist.”
“I loved my grandmother’s hands. I thought they were beautiful,” she says.
“Me too. The most beautiful thing was my grandmother’s hands all twisted and used.”
“What if we just let ourselves be?”
“Didn’t know that was an option.”
When I get home, I look in the mirror I have been avoiding. I take in my face as it is, and instead of hating on it, I thank it. This is what wisdom looks like. My lines and growing knuckles are to be celebrated, not despised. My son enters my mind, and I don’t push him away. I tell him I love him, and that he is always with me. I can’t go back to that young woman that cradled him in my arms, but I can forever hold him in my mending heart that does not fake smiles.
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