From the Heart

by Heather Wildman

It took one doctor appointment, an hour in the waiting room, and three tests for my life to crumble around me. It took the words Your son has hypertrophic cardiomyopathy combined with ventricular septal defect to send me into an emotional numbness.

It took two nights of tucking my kids into bed and staring at a screen for hours, thinking I needed to write but coming up blank-empty before the numbness faded.

The third night, the tears started. So did the typing. Clack. Clack. Clack. The sound of my fingers flying over the keys, pouring out all my frustration; my baby had the same problems a cousin of mine had recently died from. But the frustrations didn’t stop there.

How fair was it that someone who loved her kids, who would give life and limb to protect them, should have to live knowing her son was at risk every day of his life? How fair was it that MY son got the privilege of carrying around this secret in his little body, when I had spent my life babysitting abused and neglected children and doing what I could in my time with them to make their lives a little better?

So, I typed, and I ached, until poor me faded into, poor him, and eventually into poor them. On the screen, mirroring the emotions and memories, a story unfolded. The birth of a tainted child, the attempted murder, the regret and care of the mother who abandoned him in his youth, the abuse that brought two beautiful people together, and their ability to love despite their backgrounds.

When finished, the story sat on my hard drive. All my pain poured out in a compact little file.

It took a year before I opened it again. It was my baby, in almost a literal sense of the word; raw, callous emotion that burst from me to become a beautiful story. One you could say was literally close to my heart.

That was the moment I knew I was finally ready to share.

_____________

Heather Wildman has been writing for twenty-plus years but only recently decided to take her “scribbles” public. Word art has been a passion for her since the eighth grade when one wonderful teacher stepped up and nurtured that desire and need. Her debut novella, “Ebin’s Heart“, is available at Red Rose Publishing.

Blog link: http://psychoticblah.blogspot.com/

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