Falling...

It's 2:30am and I am wide awake.

My dreams have tangled up inside themselves again. I am swimming in images of newborn babies and school children marching in circles, dogs who can't go inside and driving to England in the back of a big brown van.

I awoke suddenly, my pulse racing, sweat beading in the crooks of my elbows when I was faced with an image of my sweet Mashuga boy falling for what seemed like miles out of a window.

Or was it my baby brother when he was four and adorable?

Whoever it was, this darling boy launched out the window and I scrambled to look out and see him barely holding to the edge. I grabbed his hand, held it to the side of the building. Reached for him. I tried. I tried so hard to hold him up, to help him. But his hand refused to sustain my grip and he slipped -- silently -- his mouth forming a surprised, yet serene O as he descended to the ground.

And I woke up. I looked around. My feet couldn't hit the floor fast enough to go running down stairs to find out whether my sweet boy was alive.

Then the dream began to fade and fizzle. My head stopped spinning and I realized it was just a dream.

Still, as mothers do, I had to tiptoe into each of my children's rooms and kiss them silently -- willing my love to hold them safe and spin its way into their dreams.

And now I am here, wondering, grasping at the amorphous language of dreams. My heart aches with questions I have asked since my mother called yesterday morning to give me bad news.

Will there never be true peace, be healing? Will it always be temporary?

Where does justice end and mercy begin?

And how far must a sweet soul bend with forgiveness and second chances before she breaks?

And what exactly is the dance between love and being loved, between deserving and need?

Will addiction ever let go its grip on one of the people I love more than life itself? Will there never be a day when he can hold his head high, face trials and disappointments without seeking for numbness?

Will life hold peace for such a soul? Will it come soon enough?

And most of all, I wish I knew what more I could do.

I see him falling, falling and reach for him and hold my heart out for him, praying, hoping, searching for answers as I always have done. But why can I not save him?

Why can't I be stronger, better, able somehow to hold him up?