Abyss

Have you ever stood on the edge of an abyss?
Frozen in a moment of abject horror, unable to process that what you're seeing is actually happening?
A desperate need deep inside you for someone to say it was a sick joke, that your worst fear didn't just play out before your very eyes.
A child's cry, so innocent and factual, becoming a beacon of heart-wrenching pain, jerking your mind inside your head and tearing apart your heart with each octave.
Helplessness and the realization that you don't know what to do, that your precious child might die because you weren't fast enough to catch her.
Even after many tell you that the infant is fine and will live, a part of your heart will never melt, will never thaw, will never move from the edge of the abyss.
A part of your mind never stops replaying the images of her head hitting the floor, knowing it was an accident, knowing it was completely unintentional and that even if you had the speed of a superhero, there's no way you could have caught her in time.
A part that tries to forgive, but can't, unable to comprehend that someone else who loves that child just as much as you could've been inadvertently responsible for her innocent skull impacting with the carpet.
Falling asleep, unable to keep proper watch over an active child, a part can't let go, will never let go, is stunned by disbelief and the empty silence of impending death.
In that moment, you watched that child die, even though your ears can hear her in the other room, crying not from pain, but because she doesn't like her diaper being changed, in a second, all the ways she could die happened.
Part of you tried to die with her, but couldn't and instead will always remain dying in that moment on the edge of the abyss of the death that could have been and only through the hand and grace of God, didn't.


Garnet Leiah Hyneman
Wednesday, May 29, 2002 10:26:43 PM

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