a word, please

I love words.
I love to play with words and pull them apart and put them back together as new words.
As much as I love to make up words,  there are already such amazing words for everything you can possibly think of.
Well… not everything…

Petrichor is the word for the smell of the earth after it rains.
There is a word for the first cry of a new born baby:  vagitus.
The dot that goes over a lower case j or i is called a tittle.
When you hesitate while introducing someone because you have forgotten their name, that is a tartle.
When you press on your closed eyes til you see lights, those lights are called “phosphenes”.
The coating at the tip of your shoelace is an aglet.
There are words for fears of things you didn’t even realize people could be afraid of, like hair (chaetophobia).
Toxophilia is the love of archery.
A person who collects teddy bears has a name:  arctophile.
If you have an affair you are an adulterer.
If you have a spouse you are a wife or husband.
If you have a child you are a mother or father.
If you have a sibling with a child you get a name too: uncle or aunt.
A person who has lost their spouse is a widow or widower.
A child who has lost their parents is an orphan.
There are words for all the things and all the nonthings.

But there is no word for someone who has lost a child.
Maybe because no one wants to speak about it?  Maybe… and maybe that’s a small part of why being this nameless thing is so fucking lonely.

I was grocery shopping today and the nice man at the seafood counter counter (fishmonger– he gets a name, too) was saying Happy Mother’s Day to all the ladies with kids.  Then he got to me and asked, “Are you a mother?”
I choked up and stammered like he just spit out an algebra problem at me.  “Uhhh… uh… yeah…” I answered strangely and then cried for a while in the car (…and later on Adam’s shoulder… and on the front porch… and in the shower….)

I am.  I am a mother.   I know that.
I just wish sometimes that there was a succinct way to express the whole truth without having to explain.
A word.
I want a word.

.