Guest post by Jess McCormack
Again and again my body lets out a bright red scream. A scream that shatters hope and scorches scars into my soul.
My body fails me.
The scream snatches away my purpose, my reason for existing.
Once, long ago, I had it all: hope, belief, joy; a future that was lit with endless possibility. And then my body screamed its loudest, rawest, bloodiest scream. A siren of impending death.
Not for me, although perhaps it was closer than I dared to believe. Even so, that scream signaled the end of me and the beautiful life that grew inside of me.
My body failed me.
Cycles and spirals of nature and life, they still all end with the bright red scream of loss. And each time, another layer of rough, heavy charge is thrown upon my shoulders.
I carry load upon load of coarse bricks of grief.
I don’t understand why.
Why me? What did I do to deserve this burden of sorrow? Why is hope taken so cruelly from me?
Again and again so vividly, viciously snatched from my grasp to seep slowly, painfully away.
The bright red scream is silent, but it rips through my core.
I don’t know how many more layers I can carry.
How many more screams will I have to suffer before I succumb to a fate I cannot bear to imagine, crushed beneath the weight of all I have lost?
How many more screams until I am no longer able to touch my fingertips to the dream of hope, of sustaining life and love?
Jess McCormack became both a mother and a bereaved mother in April 2013, when her beautiful Maeve died during labor. Now she is so grateful to have Maeve’s little sister to hold in her arms, while both her daughters have a hold of their mom’s heart.
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