Holes

There is a lot of courage necessary to have your family pictures taken when someone is missing.  Making that step is such a scary thing it takes you years to find the courage.  It is not the lack of time or the effort it will take in finding the perfect outfits that is holding you back.  And it’s not the difficulty of choosing the place or finding a photographer.  And it’s definitely not lack of desire.  In fact, you really, really, really want family pictures.  You so very badly want to preserve the memories of what you have together.  You want to preserve your daughter’s uniqueness and beautiful transformation to becoming her true self.  And your middle son is quickly turning into a young man and you want to capture on film the bright sunshine he spreads everywhere he goes.  And then there’s the little guy who changes every day and in many ways looks so much like his father yet is still so much his own little self.  So, no, it’s not for lack of desire…

It is the big gaping hole that you are afraid of.  You know it will be there.  How could it not be?  It will be there staring right back at you.  How do you hide the hole? How can you cover what is so blatantly missing?  So years go by and your babies grow and change and it hurts to know you are not capturing every single moment.

But finally, after years and years, the desire to preserve time overcomes the fear of what is missing and you gather all of the courage you can muster and call the photographer.  You choose a barn, old and sturdy, that has withstood the winds of time.  It has a few holes of its own.  You gather your children around you, and it is unspoken, but they are afraid of the hole, too.  You take the big leap together and squeeze in close and smile for the camera.  And you are so pleasantly surprised to find that the hole has been filled with the bond of strength and love that comes from overcoming tragedy together.  In fact, the hole is barely noticeable at all because it is patched up with love that is pure and smiles that are hard-earned but genuine, and laughter that comes freely.  And you are supported by the quiet strength of winter’s beauty that surrounds you and the old weathered barn stands in graceful silence in the background.

The Softening

It has been two years since the start of The Year That Tried to Break You.  The year of loss and cruelty and heartbreak and grief and pain and change and more loss and more change.  And the irony is not lost on you that it was also The Year of Light.  The year of meeting sisters you never knew you had and of the two souls who connected unexpectedly, and the year of witnessing your children rise up and be beautiful and amazing against the odds.  And the year of the gifts of kindness and love from so many.  And the year of learning to stand up on your own.

It has been almost two years since that year began.  And even still you find it a daily struggle to be soft.  When it would be so much easier to just harden up.  It is a daily struggle to not just harden up and protect your fragile heart.  Many days, most days, it seems it would be much easier to stay shut and be cold and hard.  It has become a daily choice to remain soft.  

You make that choice daily because you have to.  You have to soften so you don’t crack.  You have to bend so you don’t break.  You have to be vulnerable and open your heart.  You have to live and in order to fully live you have to let love in and let the light out.  And letting the light out, that is the scariest thing of all.

So you resist the urge to close up and hide away and you soften and remain grateful for the Light that the Darkness has brought to you.

Don't Tell Me

Don’t tell me that I’m beautiful, not yet.

I may show you that I am, but I would like to take my time…

Don't call me baby, not yet.
I want to look into your eyes and see it there first...

Don’t tell me that you know me, not yet.

Not unless you have walked with me awhile…

Don’t tell me that you understand, not yet.

Not until you have sat with me a night and watched my dreams erupt…

Don’t tell me that you want me, not yet.

Not before our hearts have met…

Don’t tell me I’m the One, not yet

For I don’t believe there is an Only…

Tell me that you love me,

And with all my heart I’ll love you back…

But don’t tell me that I’m beautiful. 

Until you really know.

Raindrops and Tiny Dresses

Loss will uncover things for you that you never knew were happening in the world.  For example, did you know there are people in the world, complete strangers, who sew tiny dresses for babies who die?  Well, there are those people.  They sew tiny white dresses with yellow smocking and leave them at the hospital for babies whose parents never had time to think that they might need a tiny white dress to put their tiny baby in while they hold her for the first and last time.  And then there are the people who crochet tiny blankets to wrap your tiny baby in.  Because you may have never thought about it, but a receiving blanket is much too large to wrap your tiny baby girl in.  I remember lying in my hospital bed holding my baby girl in her tiny white dress wrapped in her tiny crocheted blanket, astounded by the fact that a complete stranger would take the time to sew that tiny dress and crochet that tiny blanket.  Who was this stranger?  Was she old? Was she young?  Was she a mother?  Had she lost a baby too?  Surely she knew what it was to love a child.

And then there was the kindness of the man from the burial park whose job it was to call and tell you that she had been buried.  He could have just said that it was done.  But you could tell that he had chosen his words carefully and thoughtfully.  He said, “I wanted you to know that we have buried your daughter Jillian.  We buried her just as the rain began.”  I’m pretty sure that he also knew what it was to love a child.  And you are so grateful to this man who added in those few extra words, to give you a memory of your baby’s burial even though you weren’t brave enough to be there yourself.

The Little Girl at 1207

You took a trip home to 1207, to where you lived before.  To where you lived before the ups and downs of life unearthed you.  You see the home where you laughed and played and cried and lived as a little girl.  Where you were always surrounded by many yet more often than not felt all alone.  You see the window you peered through.  You remember the giant closet you hid away in for hours at a time, safely enclosed within the four walls and the dark.  You see the tree that was struck in the storm.  You see the field where streams would form if it rained hard enough.  And remember watching stick boats float away, out of sight.  You remember the giant stump in the back and the stone wall and the kittens.  So many kittens, and the walks and the Sno-cones, and the horses and the long bus rides on bumpy roads.  The pool is still there, where you learned how to swim, and the fence where the raspberries grew and the place where the garden was.  You drive past the corner where you sold cantaloupe with your brother.  And there is the sledding hill.  And you wonder which neighbors are still around, after all these years…?  You feel the November air and marvel at how the sunshine feels the same way it felt back then and the air feels like the same air.  

 And for so long, the memories of this place in your mind had you convinced that you were just a scared and lost and lonely little girl struggling to be noticed and find her way.  But then you go back now, knowing what you know, having started the uncovering of the covered up part of your heart.  And you realize that that little girl at 1207 was You all along.

Rise Up

This is for the ones who struggle,

but they still rise up.

This is for the ones who don’t have pretty new school clothes to wear,

but they wear the biggest smiles.

This is for the ones who come with nothing to eat,

but they show up eager to learn.

This is for the ones who never got put to bed,

but still they come and try their best.

This is for the little babies who get put on a bus without a hug or a kind word to send them off,

And still they come, and so happy to see us.

This is for the ones who may never learn the way they are “supposed to”,

and still they work and work and work, because they want to make us proud.

This is for all of those who struggle,

but somehow they find the strength and courage to rise up anyway.

This is from the teachers who cannot even begin to understand

or know where and what you are coming from,

But even so we know you and we watch you and we stand in awe of you

and we thank you for rising up. 

Each and every day you make us proud. 

You make us who we are.  

All you little ones who get off of that bus and you rise up anyway.

Follow-through

So you make all off the difficult decisions, but unfortunately now you have to see them through.  It is time for the open house where people want to express their condolences.  And of course you have to be there because it is you and your children they are coming to see.  You know your children want to be there but you also know they are not necessarily equipped to deal with what will be coming through those doors at any moment.  Because who would be?  So you strategically place them on a couch behind you, flanked by their cousins who act as very good distractors throughout the two-hour window.  They have their pretty mourning clothes on now, and so do you.  Ready to receive condolences.

And then the doors open and they start coming and it seems that they will never stop.  The line stretches down the hallway and around the corner, and you never do see the end of it.  Your children are sitting behind you and your dear friends stand behind you, like body guards, waiting for the onslaught of condolences.  You don’t have your shit together, not even in the slightest.  You are a blubbering mess and you are grateful for those friends and acquaintance who blubber with you.  And you are grateful for their kind words, for them telling you how sorry they are, and for the heartfelt hugs, because you have learned that it is much better to cry with somebody than to cry alone.  But every time you look up after one hug, you again see the line that extends into nowhere. 

Mixed up in the line of people you know and love are the people, the many, many people who were his patients.  And you don’t know any of them from Adam.  And they want to hug you and shake your hand and tell you what a good person he was.  And you smile and nod your head, but all you can think about is how much you hate him.  And for every person that tells you what a great person he was, you think to yourself, “Really?  Is this what great people do?”  You think you might suffocate on their words.  They are heavy and hurtful and cut you to the core.  You are so extremely grateful to your friends who smuggled in a water bottle full of vodka.  You take a swig and you think to yourself that if you have to nod and smile while one more stranger tells you what a great man your dead husband was you really might toss your cookies all over them.  And the line never ends.  They just keep coming.

As if this isn’t enough, on top of all the people you don’t even know, and the line that stretches out the door, there is the photo-video set to music that your mother-in-law put together that plays loudly on the TV at the other end of the room.  It plays pictures of you and him and your children and all of those moments in life that in a normal situation you would want to memorialize.  And it plays over and over again, so many times that it makes you dizzy.  And you try not to watch it because it is making you dizzy, but you happen to be facing it and cannot turn away.

Your friends keep trying to get you to sit down.  And even though they don’t come right out and say it, you are pretty sure that you must look like shit.  They bring a chair over and tell you to sit.  But you do not want to sit.  You want to get through this line, so this moment of your life can be over.  And then there is the woman who approaches, in tears.  You do not know her, but she is in tears and she gives you a hug.  She tells you, amidst her blubbering, that your husband saved her life.  That he caught her oral cancer before it was too late, and that because of him she went to the doctor and got the appropriate treatment and she is alive.  And she is very broken up about your husband’s death.  You feel sorry for her, that her hero is dead. 

Finally the two hours are up.  And your friend notices that you must go.  Now.  So she links her arm in yours and she pulls you through the crowds, without a word, past all of the people and into the parking lot.  Her husband pulls up the car.  But you don’t get in.  Not yet.  You finally break down and the blubbering turns into full-fledged sorrow.  And she holds you and lets you tell her how much you hate him.  She just holds you.  Without a word.  And after some time has passed you look up and notice a staff member from the mortuary watching you out of a side window.  You regard this with passing interest and wonder to yourself if someone in her line of work ever gets used to seeing people so very, very sad.