His Button

I can still see the little mechanism that resided on the right side of his stomach, etched in my brain as it is. It was such a mundane apparatus but since it kept my son alive, to me it was his everything. It was a small little button but because it was his mouth, the way he received nutrients, the way, one of the ways he was kept alive, it will always stay with me.

That little device was a part of a way of our life. Plugging in the tubing into that little button was a muscle memory thing for me. I matched up the line on the tubing plug to the line on the feeding device, twisted slightly so it was locked and place and let the bottle drip until he was fed. Once it was done, I matched the lines, popped the tubing out, and put the little plastic cap back on the button. It served its purpose until the next time.

I miss the button in the same way I miss him because it was part of who he was. He had that little apparatus since he was two weeks old. He died with it in place. I don’t know for sure, but I think he was cremated with it in place. I’d give anything to have that back, the old routines, the feeding rituals, the mechanism and tubing, because it would mean he was back. I miss him terribly.

I have another mouth to feed, and she is fortunately free of all the devices and mechanisms that granted him life for so long. I wonder what I’ll tell her about her brother one day, about that time in our lives. I know I’ll definitely tell her about the little button in his stomach that ate for him and gave us the time we so desperately needed with him.

 

Trifecta’s editors asked for 33-333 words using MOUTH in its third definition:

3: something that resembles a mouth especially in affording entrance or exit: as
a : the place where a stream enters a larger body of water
b : the surface opening of an underground cavity
c : the opening of a container
d : an opening in the side of an organ flue pipe

This is what I came up with. For some reason, when I thought of mouth, I thought of the surrogate mouth my son had while he was alive.Check out the other writers signed up for this challenge!