Without Boundaries

When I was pregnant, I heard how once you become a mother yourself, your motherhood doesn't stop with your child. It expands to include children everywhere.

"When a toddler cries, MOMMY, my head still turns," I heard from mothers with children in elementary school.

"If someone says MOM in the grocery store, I'll follow the voice, knowing it's not my kid," my own mom said.

I think I felt the first true boundary-less pang yesterday when I read the morning news.

There was a car accident over the weekend, a 6-car crash. Not much information was given, it was just a small blurb in the Local section. The paper listed only one fatality, a 3-month-old infant girl, named Lucille. Her father remains in intensive care.
The little dude is 3 months old.
The father in the crash is the same age as me.
The crash happened at 4:30pm on Friday, undoubtedly after a dad went to pick up his baby girl from daycare for the weekend, like so many of us do.
My husband picks the little dude up each day from daycare, around 4:30.

My head began to spin as tears slipped from my eyes onto my cheeks. While wholly unfair to say I felt what this little girl's family is feeling, I do feel as a mother. I couldn't imagine anything, and I mean anything, worse happening to a family. I imagined this poor mother, Lucille's mother, going into the dark, forever quiet of her daughter's nursery. Delicately touching her tiny onesies, smelling her quilts, and sitting in her rocking chair. It still grips my heart and I can't stop thinking about it.

It's unimagineable. I know I have read similiar heartbreaking stories involving babies, children, and even adults in my life, but nothing has affected me so dramatically. Being a mother doesn't include boundaries after all.