Losing Joshua

Today, I find myself on my knees, pleading for forgiveness and wondering how this could have happened to me and my precious little boy. I'm questioning what I did wrong. Our words, spoken out of desperation, ended up causing harm. We were blackmailed and forced to exaggerate the truth to secure a spot in a shelter and stay out of the cold.

Should I have done it differently? Stayed quite? Refused to do their bidding? I beg forgiveness for the desperate choices I made that led us here. Forgiveness from the world, from my children.

The first time I looked up into her cold, expressionless face, I saw someone in pain, and I pitied her. I realized that she did not see the world as I did; her perception of it was formed out of her own experience, not mine, which must have been harsh. Her name was Kerin. She was a social worker. She was supposed to help people, but she did just the opposite.

It happened so long ago, but I still remember our last

day together; we were still a family then. I can hear his sweet voice, my

brave little boy.

“Momma, when can I go home?” He didn’t like being away

from us. I felt my heart suddenly drop. I closed my eyes as I felt the

tears come, and I pushed them back. I couldn’t let him see me this way.

“Soon, baby, soon,” I said, finding the courage to look

at him. Joshua grinned and threw his arms around me; I held him tightly,

knowing that I had already lost him. It was the hardest thing I had ever

done or would ever do again.

“I’m going on vacation, I’m going to stay here,” he said,

eyes dancing, bright and wide, he loved people, had no idea what was happening.

He swung his legs back and forth as if waiting to board some extraordinary ride

at a carnival.

“I love you, Momma,” he said finally, his little hand

lifting my chin. I nodded. “I love you too,” I said.

 Kerin came up behind us, eyes

squinting,  I couldn’t breathe,  couldn’t walk away.

 I stared back at her, she seemed untouched, her gray eyes dull with

indifference. I wondered where her humanness had gone. Despair and defeat

flooded my heart. There was nothing I could do. This was wrong. A power-hungry

woman demanding vengeance for what? I had no idea. I stared at her stony face.

She wouldn't meet my gaze; she pulled Joshua by the wrist, and a cold ache

settled in my chest as she walked past me as if I wasn't even there. I followed

her scrawny figure with my gaze and studied her dreary gray suit and dingy pair

of boots as they disappeared into a gloomy corridor behind barred doors. I

listened until I couldn’t hear her heels clattering on the floor anymore.

Christopher and Brittany, my other children, stood like a

couple of soldiers at attention, eyes wide, faces solemn. Children

shouldn’t have to live through this, I thought. My motherhood had been stripped

from me, my child taken to some forbidden place where I could not protect

him. The air felt too thick to breathe; I could barely stand. Hatred rose

like a demon inside me, putrid and rotting, and I promised to vindicate our

loss. Then came the frantic realization: Joshua was gone, and the warmth

of his body still lingered in my arms.

I stumbled forward, reaching for the door, but it was

locked,

I swallowed back the bile in my throat. I would fight and

never forget what they took from us that day. I remember the children as they

huddled close, tears streaming from their cheeks. My mother was there too;

it was like a funeral, for indeed, something had died inside us all that

day. The silence was deafening. The laughter and the childish wiles were

gone; the bickering, even the fighting, had ceased. We walked out as if waking

from some horrible nightmare, trying to convince ourselves it wasn’t true.

Trying to pretend the world was still a good place …. with good people.

There were no remedies for the heartache the system had

caused; nothing could make things right again. I was alone in this battle,

with no friends to support me and no family to back me up; it was I and the

state wrestling with the fate of an innocent child.

Days passed and turned into months, and months to years, and I cried out for help, but no one heard me. “I was broken

into and attacked at knifepoint; that’s why I left my home. Our lives were in

danger. Do you hear me? Do you understand?” I recounted the tale until my voice was hoarse. However, my words fell on deaf ears in the court; instead, they only fueled the fire and perpetuated the war.

“No.” The reply came loud and clear. “You put your

children and yourself into a homeless shelter. You are an unfit parent. ” The

worker stated calmly. “Nothing you say or do can help you now because I will

personally see to it that hat you lose all three children. She looked at me as

if I were some criminal, she was trying to protect the children from.

“But we were in danger. They came every day," I explained. "I found

a place where we could be safe.” I managed, clenching my teeth, but it was

useless. She would not listen to my story. She didn't care. The Darkness I had fallen into

was infinite. I lived in constant fear. I had no peace of mind. At a

moment's notice, I was ready for combat, prepared to tear down the walls the

system had built around me. 

The years passed. I had no formal training, but when the

time came, I beat every attorney and social worker in the courthouse. Love had

spurred me on, the love of a mother for her children and a longing for what was

just. I never did get Joshua back, but I never lost the other two. Together, we

had achieved victory. Years later, my heart still aches for him; I still seek

forgiveness, and guilt weighs heavily on my heart.

Even in a place of darkness, my child had found a home, learned

to love again; he had a new family, boys, just like him. Through it all, I saw him touch a

thousand lives, and I knew that I had won because he had brought about change within the system. He had illuminated places that had never seen light before, and I knew, without a doubt, that there was indeed good in the world. Although the state

was hard to fight alone, they could not destroy my Joshua, his love was too big

for them to kill.