There’s that moment, the moment before it happens, that the world is still the same. Everything is in its place, all you know is as is always has been, nothing you see is any different from what it’s always looked like. Just before the car is broadsided, just before you open the door to find the stereo missing, just before the diagnosis arrives, just before you touch her forehead and find it cold. And then…the world changes. Irrevocably. Eternally. Nothing will ever feel the same. No matter how much time passes, you will always be a woman who lost a child. Never again just a teacher. Never again just a dancer. Never again just a parent. But always a teacher who’s lost a child, a dancer who’s child died Sudden Infant Death, a parent who’s child was kidnapped from her tent.
After that moment comes another moment. The moment in the pocket, when only you and the few gathered with you know. To everyone else in the world she is still alive, the murder has not yet occurred, her body not yet turned on her; everyone still loves a living, breathing woman. But soon the echo chamber will cry out the news and slowly the darkness is populated with eyes filled with sympathy. The world is forever changed. You are forever changed.
The moment has far less to do with the event than with knowledge of the event. We live in a constant state of not knowing, altered periodically by searing tragedy. The trajectory of our lives bounces wildly off these moments, atoms carving paths through the ether. The moments in the pocket are precious moments, moments of held silence where the news hovers before its ignition. The moments we long to recreate.
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