Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue

The cloth of the duvet ruffles with the fingers of her child, playfully walking up to the edge of the bed and resting his hands on his mother’s face. She doesn’t open her eyes, not just yet, she waits until the little boy cups her cheek and whispers her name. She smiles, eyes still closed, her grin spreading wider and wider as she hears the impatience in the child’s voice, urging her to look at him.

“Mommy, I know you’re awake,” the little boy says with a puff of exasperated air she feels on her face.

She turns her face away from him and covers her eyes with her arm. “Five more minutes little boy. It’s not time to get up,” she says.

“But it IS time Mommy! It’s your birthday and you need to get up. I made you some breakfast.”

The news causes her to become alert immediately, her body shooting straight up in bed, her nose sniffing the air for something to be on fire.

“Did you use the stove?” she asks.

“No, I made it with eggs,” he replies.

With a groan, she flops back down against the fluffy pillows and chuckles. “Well, thank goodness it was just eggs!” she exclaims with a hearty laugh.

The little boy smiles a sweet and crooked smile as he turns to the door before saying over his shoulder, “Yeah, eggs with coffee. I mixed them in a bowl so you could just drink it all together.”

“WHAT?!” she hollers from the bed as she flings off the covers. The little boy squeals with delight and runs from the room, his mother in tow, chasing after him in an oversized nightgown that flaps in the furious race.

Both sets of bare feet slap against the well-worn hardwood floors as the pair makes it to the kitchen at the exact same time, their laughter filling the already warm room. She sweeps her son off his feet and into her arms, kissing his neck with loud smacking sounds as he squeals for her to put him down.

She plops him on the counter, his short legs dangling and kicking back and forth as she begins the much needed clean up of the egg/coffee hybrid mess. They sing together, his favorite song, about how each of them were the others sunshine, their only sunshine.

The kitchen fills with song; it echoes from the ceiling and bounces along the walls as sunshine streams through the windows and touches their smiling faces. She tosses him some bread to drop in the toaster; he hands her the whisk so she can scramble the eggs. When she turns to face the stove, she hears him hop off the counter and scurry to another room.

“Where are you going, my sunshine?” she asks, but there is no answer. She hears a tussling noise as objects, most likely toys, are tossed around, followed by the thudding of little feet as her sunshine comes back into the kitchen. In his hand is a tiny box, wrapped in brown paper, and on the top is an outline of his handprint that he had drawn for her.

“What’s this?” she asks.

“It’s your present Mommy, I made it for you,” the blonde beam of light responds, his face lit up with joy, his beautiful blue eyes round and gleaming. He extends his arms upwards, gesturing to be picked up.

“Can I open it?” she asks as she lifts him back onto the counter.

“Not yet, just a few more minutes, you have to wait.”

She pushes out her lower lip in a fake pout and crosses her arms over her chest, feigning sadness. Her sulky expression coaxes a burst of laughter out of the boy, his cheery giggle filling the air. Her heart stops beating for half a moment as she stands there and watches him laugh; his face so flawless. The melody of the childlike chuckles that roll from his lungs are the purest sound in the world.

“Should we make muffins too?” she asks when his laughter abates. His response is an emphatic nodding of the head. “Hahahaa, okay then, muffins too!”

She spins to the oven to turn it on, the buttons beeping as she presses them. Something strange though now: when she stops touching them, they still beep.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

She stares at the oven in confusion, opening the door, noticing it isn’t coming on, yet the beeping persists.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

She turns to look at her son. He sits there with his beautiful smile, blinking his gorgeous blue eyes, now damp with tears.

“I have to go now. I love you Mommy. Happy Birthday.”

Beep. Beep. Beep.

And with the smallest breeze, her handsome little boy is gone, whooshed away by the fog of dream. She was startled awake by the beeping of her alarm clock.

She slammed her hand down onto the clock, silenced it, and then rolled back over to weep into her pillow. That is how her husband found her, curled in a ball under the covers, her body heaving with pain and sorrow as she remembered the perfect bits of the dream, now demolished by the harsh reality that her son was gone.

She remembered the dreadful accident, the car plowing through the red light and slamming into the passenger side of her car. The haze of the ambulance ride, the panic when she woke in the hospital, the incessant beeping of the machines that struggled to keep her young son alive. The anguish she screamed into the hallway as he slipped away, his eyes forever shut, his blonde, curly hair hidden under yards of gauze and stained with blood.

She recalled the weeks that followed like a movie she’d seen time and again: The pitying looks of others that trampled through her house, all with their sad eyes and meaningless sorrow. How she hated to wake up every day. How she begged to sleep and dream the dreams of birthday breakfasts in the kitchen, her son’s laughter filling the very soul of the air that he touched.

Her husband called her from her thoughts and asked her to sit up; he had something to show her. With a deep, steadying breath, she pulled the covers from her face and wiped the tears from her eyes.

He sat there, at the end of the bed, his face soft and smiling. She could barely look at him, for all she saw in the angles of his loving face was the image of her lost child. Both were blonde with bright blue eyes. It was hard to look at him; all she could see was her little Tommy.

“I know today is hard for you, my love,” her husband started, “but this finally came in the mail.” He stretched out his hand, and in it was a small box encased in brown paper and wrapped in twine.

“I don’t know if I’m ready to celebrate my birthday, Thomas,” she replied.

“Please try. Just open it, and if you’re not ready, we can put it away and try again later.”

She nodded, anxious for a gift, but guilty that she should still be alive to celebrate a birthday when her son could not. Taking the gift from his hand, she pulled aside the twine and unwrapped the package. Her breath caught in her throat.

The box she held was small and purple, her favorite color, a jewelry box. Lifting the lid with a slight squeak of the hinges, she saw what was laid inside.

A necklace laid on purple satin with a beautiful blue stone at its center, and behind it, the tiniest of handprints. Tears streamed down her face like a river, soaking her nightgown but not swiped away. She plucked the necklace from the box and held it up to the beams of light streaming in through the bedroom windows. The necklace was light; it danced and twirled in her hand, prismatic and incandescent in its subtle beauty.

“After Tommy passed…” her husband started to say but paused, gauging her reaction. She closed her eyes as more tears fell and she failed to speak, but she didn’t stop him. “After he passed, you know most of his organs were donated. His eyes, his lungs, his heart…” even Thomas couldn’t say that without his words cracking against the back of his throat.

They both took a slow, somber breath and she reached her hand out to grasp his. She looked at him and nodded, a silent permission for him to keep going.

“The families that received those gifts from Tommy wanted to say thank you and send us some love, a piece to remember him by. We had his ashes turned into a stone the same color as his eyes. Turn it over, sweetheart,” he said.

She spun the piece in her hand, but she could barely read the inscription on the back through her misty eyes. After several long blinks, the words of her son came into focus and were loud in her ears.

“I love you Mommy.”