Calling to the Wind

It had been days since he had been missing. His friends had come back but he hadn't. She'd had her reservations about letting him go but her husband had said, "Don't worry! He's a sensible kid! He'll be fine!" and she'd heard the words and accepted them, although she hadn't believed them, not in the deep of her, in her womb where he had been conceived, in her maternal instinct. She'd been wary and it was that instinct which now prodded her with spasms of nerves that jerked her into guilt and reminded her that something was very wrong.

She was sitting now, her face sagging, her misery and worry dragging her normally bright features to the floor, her hands constantly moving in her lap, twisting the hanky that was wet. She couldn't stand as her legs were shaking but she couldn't bear the inertia of sitting and so the hanky wringing continued until it looked like a rope.

She didn't know what to do. What could she do? Her husband wanted to stay with her, so he said, but she didn't want him around her, felt revulsion at his concern and reassurance. She tried not to let it in but she blamed him, blamed him for her son's death. She wanted to spit at him. He'd let him die. Because that was what had happened. Her son was dead. She should have never let him go. She should have held him back. She shouldn't have listened.

Now her husband was out on the cliff. Her sister was due any minute, to sit with her, keep an eye on her. She'd seen the relief in his face, at being allowed to go, the relief to be away from her, doing something, being productive. The police must have taken pity on him because he'd not come back. Either that or there were no police anymore, nobody seeking. Or perhaps there were and he was hovering, waiting for news, pacing back and forth, hands in his pockets, wind taking his hair away from his face and the concern etched there. She could picture him clearly, felt a pang for his pain. It was unfair to blame him. He loved their son too. But it was hard not to.

Their son. Their only son. Their only child. A fresh wave of tears came, pushing forward, the weight of emotion behind them and she sobbed afresh. No, don't cry. It might be alright, she told herself. Just this very minute they might have found him, and he was being wrapped in a blanket, maybe limping because he'd fallen down some rocks and hurt himself and hadn't been visible to his friends, couldn't be heard by them, and had waited until the vigorous searching of the coastguard found him and hollered up and then there would have been a frenzy of action, ropes and pulleys and high-vis, spurred by adrenaline and the buzz of relief and how today, it might all turn out well and no-one would be grieving.

The light of this vision she had created was one she much preferred. It felt so real to her in that moment. She could see it so clearly, her son rescued, found. Suddenly, she wanted to get out, out of the house. She needed to be on that cliff. She needed to be there as they brought him in. She wanted to feel the euphoria of seeing his dishevelment and his pinched features and she wanted to hold him tight in her arms, feel his living warmth. It was so crisp in her mind that it was like it was happening and convinced of its truth, she jumped from the sofa, pulled on her coat and boots and sped out the front door. A day or so before, she'd have been stopped in her actions by the police who were sitting with her, waiting with her. Because days had passed, they'd left, leaving her to her husband. She didn't want to think it but she thought they believed that he was lost, at sea, her boy. But she knew! She knew better and this knowledge propelled her out of the door into the wind and the enquiring gazes of her neighbours who called to her but she ignored them, jumping into her car and reversing off the drive with a squeal in her urgency to get to the cliff.

She drove like a mad woman at first, not caring, only feeling the importance of getting there as soon as she could. He was alive, she knew it. She could feel it! It was the realisation of this that made her slow down. She mustn't die! Not now she knew she was going to see him. She needed to calm herself. How ironic would that be? Son believed dead found and mother dies on way to be reconciled! How tragic! But this wasn't their story. No! Theirs was a small miracle, a happy ending, a segment on a daytime T.V. show to bring tears to the eyes of viewers and the studio audience, sharing their joy and the unexpectedness of reprieve in the face of certain tragedy. Everyone would be jealous of their luck. She imagined them on the couch, mic'ed up, her hair bouffant, wearing her best dress and him beside her, young and alive and her husband nowhere to be seen.

A small doubt crept in the closer she got to the cliff. What if she was wrong? What if her instinct was wrong? But no. She wouldn't let it in and her foot pressed harder on the accelerator as she saw the opening for the car park and some people gathered and her husband's car parked. She swung in next to it and in her enthusiasm to be out there, she leapt out of the car and ran. On to the grass. Out into the openness, the salt. Tripping in her eagerness. It was just a question of finding him now. It was so simple. All she had to do was shout and she would hear him wherever he was because of their bond, the unbreakable bond between a mother and a son. They were linked, always. This she believed with all of her heart in that moment.

She threw her voice out into the wind. The wind took it a short way but not far enough. She fought against the futility of it, cupping her hands around her mouth to give her maternal cry distance, to stretch it out as far as it could. She was shouting with every bit of her, every cell screaming its need to be reunited with that it had made, to bring it close, to keep it safe. Her voice was hoarse, ripped with the power of her conviction.

She didn't know about the sirenless arrival of the ambulance behind her. Her focus was on one thing. She didn't see her husband's frightened startled face behind his tears when he saw her desperate figure screaming at the wind. She was oblivious, centred. She jumped in fright when she felt the arms of someone around her, behind her, trying to stop her, explaining. She couldn't hear him through her calling. She continued to shout, call, her son's name, her desperation bruising the ears of everyone who could hear it, the primal love of a mother, making everyone flinch in its wake. Some were embarrassed at such a raw show of emotion; others felt pity in their very marrow.

"It's too late, love," he shouted, her husband. "Stop! It's too late." He had finally reached her. It was his rawness that had commanded her attention, his absolute grief. He grasped her face in his hands now she'd stopped shouting and turned her face to his. Eye-to-eye, he stared into her wildness and said, "He's gone, love". She could see he was waiting for this to register but how could it? It wasn't true.

"No." She said it quietly, looking furtively into his eyes but seeing nothing but loss and pain and pleading there.

He simply replied,"Yes."