The physical connection between a mother/child

A beautifully expressed post about the physical link between a mother and her child's body.  Again, from Katie Allison Granju, who is working through her grief by writing at once beautiful and horrifying posts.  She writes of loved ones telling her that her son's body was "just a shell" and how she understands they are trying to comfort her, but then she writes a perfect description of how a child's body could never be just a shell to a mother.  I believe I would feel exactly the same, I think she captures those feelings perfectly. 

An excerpt from the post that I particularly relate to:

"To a mother, her child’s body is inextricably tied to her own, at the cellular level. My child’s healthy (pre drug abuse) exceptionally lovely (still, even with the drugs) body was a source of great pleasure and pride to me during all the years he inhabited it.

“I made that…I grew that…” I would sometimes think to myself with a smile as I watched his long, musical fingers play the guitar or when I saw his natural physical grace on a skateboard.
Henry’s body came from my own body. I grew him in my belly, catching a first glimpse of his features on a grainy ultrasound screen. I felt him kick inside of me, and then I pushed him out of my body – the hardest physical work I’d ever done. I cradled him in my arms for as many years as he would let me, contentedly enjoying the feel of his physical weight against my chest. For 18 years, I worked as diligently as I could to ensure that he would be physically healthy and strong by carefully choosing the food he would eat, the vitamins he took and the immunizations he received. I marveled at his physical growth, marking annual milestones on the walls of our house as he got taller and taller, and making sure that he had bigger shoes and longer pants with each growth spurt. I noted his weight and length in the meticulous baby book I kept until he went to kindergarten, and I saved baby teeth and locks of baby hair to remember these parts of his physical being at particular moments in time.


Protecting Henry’s body, as well as those of his younger siblings from pain and discomfort has been my primary daily concern for my entire adult life – since I became a mother at 23 years old. When my Henry was little, I zipped him into his cozy pajamas each night to make sure that his body would be warm enough, and even when he was a teenager, I would go into his bedroom while he slept to be sure that he had enough blankets covering him on extra-cold nights. I made sure he brushed his teeth and I hounded him to be sure he’d slathered himself in sunscreen when we went to the beach or the pool.

I reveled in the physical beauty of that amazing head of wavy brown hair and in the twinkle in his gorgeous brown eyes. I loved the way his mouth would curl to one side when he smiled. Til the day he died, I knew just how to find the cowlick at his hairline, and I could tell you the placement of the moles on his temple and on his lower belly. I was the keeper of the history of every little scar and every birthmark Henry carried with him. I knew the precise length of his fingers and his eyelashes, and I can still feel the way his tiny newborn head fit into the palm of my hand when I rocked him to sleep. I loved his distinctive speaking voice, and I still hear it echoing through our house when I am home alone, calling out to me.
Like most mothers, I knew my child’s physical being so well that from the time he was born that I could have been blindfolded and still would have easily picked him out of a line-up of same-age children simply by smell or touch. I remember all the nights when I soothed his fevers, changed soaking wet sheets and wiped up his vomit – the essential tasks of mothering that bind us to our children’s sheer physicality in a way we are never connected to any other human being.


I loved my child’s body from the first moment I laid eyes on it, just before midnight on October 7, 1991. In the first years of his life, I tenderly bathed him, changed him and brushed his hair, and then I performed the exact same intimate physical caregiving for my sweet boy during the last weeks of his life, when he was totally helpless and dependent on his parents once again.


No, this child’s body, his physical being was not “just a shell” to me. It was a precious gift that I loved fiercely and completely for 18 years, until that heart-shattering moment on May 31, 2010, when I had no choice but to leave my son’s still beautiful body in the care of strangers at the hospital. Leaving that hospital without my son was the worst thing I have ever experienced. The pain I felt as I walked out the sliding glass doors into the oppressive summer heat on that early evening just two months ago was a cruel counterpoint to the elation, unbridled joy and sense of purpose that I felt on the day I first walked out of another hospital in the same city, 18 years earlier, proudly carrying my gorgeous firstborn son in my arms."

Again, a reminder to cherish your babies, you never know what lies ahead.