104 Days
Gregory Joseph O'Meara (1957-1981) poses with unidentified female (date unknown).
104 Days
August twenty-first.
The day you left —
without ever meeting me.
My mother,
moon-full,
carrying me like a prayer in her ribs,
walked through your wreckage
with hands on her belly like armor.
She built a home from nothing,
stitched safety out of fear,
taught me that love is something you make
when the world won’t give it to you.
Your fists were weather —
but she stood taller than your storms.
She taught me this:
lightning can strike,
but thunder still learns how to speak.
Between August twenty-first
and December third, nineteen eighty-one
there are one-hundred four days.
Seventy workdays.
Thirty-four weekends and holidays.
Time enough to turn your life around.
Time enough to build a cradle.
Time enough to learn my name
before it was spoken.
But you spent those days
like loose change on bar floors.
And I was born missing
half my lullaby.
They ask if I mourn you:
How do you mourn an echo?
How do you cry for a man
who never heard your first breath?
But this —
this is not your elegy.
This is a hymn
to the women who refuse to fall.
To mothers who choose courage over collapse.
To daughters who inherit that fire
and set the dark alight.
I have a spine that remembers storms —
but I stand unbroken.
I have a heart
that beats louder than your absence.
You are only the prologue.
We — my mother and I —
we are the novel.
Every chapter says:
Survival is beautiful.
It will not whisper.
It will not apologize
for being louder than grief.
So today I do not curse you.
I do not bless you.
I carry you like a stone in my shoe —
and keep walking.
Because we learned to move mountains
even with your weight on our backs.
One-hundred four days you never knew me —
and I am every day after.
104 Days, Beth Ann Sadowski, selfie portrait (August 21st, 2025).
