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| Thomas Allen Forson, 3/31/1991-10/4/2013 |
To my sweet, precious baby boy. You have gone and left us…to
that place I used to sing to you about many nights when I would feed you before
bed and you would smile up at me. That place there is “sugar in the rock and
the honey don’t stop” and now you can taste that honey without fear. This is
one of those moments when the language I have is too inadequate to express to
you the jagged grief and the heavy anguish I carry in my soul without you. How
can the sun continue to rise and set without my precious Thomas? I hope you
know, Tommy, the fierce love I have for you. I loved every single second of
being a Mommy to you. From the moment you pounded on the wall in the morning to
come and get you ready for your day to the final meal I fed you at night, I
delighted in being the one to care for you and play with you, even if I never
felt worthy to be a Mommy to such a pure spirit. You warmed me to my core with
your tight hugs and your easy giggles. But oh how I worried over you and felt
sorrow for you. So very many times I would watch you play with your toys and
wonder about the meaning of your life. I was often sad because I thought your
life was such a small little thing and that you were being cheated out of so
many experiences. There were too many “nevers” in your future—and yet through
all of that watching I had no idea that I was studying a very important class;
me, the schoolteacher with all of that purchased higher education, all of those
years of instructing students in classrooms, Mrs. Forson was getting her most
advanced degree from a highly-skilled, master teacher. Small life indeed! What
a fool I was. Thomas Forson modeled empathy, tolerance, piety, innocence, love
and kindness, (although I have to say Tommy’s lessons on being gentle needed
some work, since no one who ever got a hug from Thomas could ever call his
touch gentle). Even his frustrations were fleeting and easily replaced with
smiles. In my sense of superiority I missed the obvious fact that Thomas had
already learned the lessons we common souls spend a lifetime struggling to
master. Tommy had a life with a powerful purpose that schooled everyone who
knew him and he never said one word—how amused he must have been to watch us
all care for him and worry over him, amused to watch us obviously feeling so
much smarter and wiser than he was. If I weren’t so humbled by my grief today I
might giggle myself at the ridiculous irony of it.
And now sweet boy, I must end
this short letter. So I’ll say to you one last time, like I sang to you in
your favorite bedtime song on our last night together, “don’t you weep Little
Baby. Come and lay your bones on the alabaster stone and be my ever-lovin’
baby.”
