Hiding the baby clothes doesn't work

Many friends have offered to come over and pack away Max's things so I wouldn't have to look at his baby stuff. It's a gesture of love and deeply appreciated. I have amazing friends who have walked to the edge with me. Master P even leapt of the cliff in a blue t-shirt that carried Max back to the nurses after I carried him home. But my way of walking razor edges is to stay open. Packing away will happen once I have unpacked every experience of this loss.

I call it Max's Chamber. I sleep in the bed where Max was born. Someone asked me if I thought this was healthy. I smiled and said "why would it matter what I thought?" His hundreds of love letters piled on a book shelf above his baby books. His water that broke on his seagrass floor has baptized this sacred site. His alter adorned with relics from the battlefield. His ashes guarded by knives. It is glaringly obvious that being Max's Mom is a privilege. I honor my duty with a hand blown glass vase filled with tuberose and sunflowers, a baby boppy turned meditation cushion, a nursery painting of Ickle-Me Tickle Me transformed into an encoded message that Max indeed moves on the wings of shoes. Of course he does. His stuffed animals from his cousins are great Buddhas. The hat he wore in my arms as he passed is the Shroud of Turin. His temple is my footsteps; is my breath behind these words.

There is no boundary between the corner where I sit with him and his stacks of baby clothes, baby slings, cloth diapers, bugaboo strollers, and co-sleepers that he was never going to use. I sit next to his baby things. How thin the line between sacred and mundane. It's invisible. All the lines are thin. I prefer walking steep edges where nothing can hide. There is no room on this type of path for hiding or hoarding. I don't think I have a choice in the matter. God doesn't negotiate our paths. Trust me. I have tried. Still argue. God loves a good debate.

So dear warriors if you are up for it, unpack your pain. Dust it off if you've been storing it. Make a shrine to the most intense moments of your life. Light a candle and begin to burn through it. We are too awake for hoarding. We are too busted open for hiding. Plus we have love to let in. Make some room. Erase any of your man-made boundaries between the sacred and the mundane. Get busy. We have work to do.