Finding Words And Packaging Life

Unedited from 2016

How do you describe what it feels like, the enormity of your loss when the actual loss of your child isn’t just grief, pain, and misery?  Those are words. I can still smell her tiny little belly the first time I buried my face into her naked little tummy. I felt her giggle and I took in her scent and felt her tiny socked feet and chubby legs meet with her tiny hands in my hair to hold me closer. My baby. She loved to blow bubbles, too. She was a tiny package who needed so much care and gave it back in shooting stars…I look to the sky for my breath sometimes and wonder at the sheer size of the Universe and where she could be for that moment,

I close my eyes and I feel her next to me under the covers with her brother, usually after a struggle for “room.” We read every night, usually 3 books and sometimes the same ones and that, no one can take away from me. I have that but I can’t explain that as loss because it wasn’t for nothing. It was for life and that is what we shared. But, it still races through my mind when someone even hints that I should be okay by now.

How do you describe her feel? Soft cheeks that I kissed, tall forehead too…The sprints across the house to catch her on her way to work for a hug. I feel her neck. I feel her hold me. What should I say to you that will allow those personal and sacred moments be translated into words that I don’t even care to put together to form a sentence.

I have since been informed that Taylor used to look through my clothes while I was gone, the same as I do now. They’re folded or hung with mine but she liked me, she really did. She was so funny sitting on the couch when I walked through, ready and on time for work or a meeting. She’s say, “Oh, mom.” Of course I would ask what was wrong with what I was wearing. Sometimes, it was obvious and sometimes she’d say, “If you can’t figure it out, I’m not telling you.” I don’t know how many times I grabbed my tummy to laugh at her little and constant quips.

The truth is that some days are good. And, some days I feel like I’m walking around the house looking for the trash she left in the living room and to see if she left for work, yet (late and looking for her keys). Some days, as our clothes mingle I feel that intimacy of putting makeup on together or looking at her brush that still has her hair in it. It’s going through cabinets and finding the kids’ thermometer and taking care of them when they were sick. They needed me. How do you explain that you’re no longer hearing your name…needed. She needed me and I wander around reading a book or cleaning or waiting.

As I write this, I realize that I miss my son at school as much as I miss my entire family and our lifestyle of swimming, playing, reading, listening to loud music, taking trips, laughing, arguing, so very bonded with close friends and other kids we babysat or who just hung out….they grow up. She was a package deal, you know. She  had it all; a sharp wit, an abundance of compassion and fight for what’s right, and a laugh that involved a slapped knee, thrown back head, wide open laughter, and a hand on her belly, too.

Ah, she had a full 22 years. In her physical world she was fiercely independent and acted with integrity, always knowing what the right thing to do is…she wouldn’t even let me shortcut. She was so brave and strong and oddly enough that’s what she’s always said about me. How do you explain that? I don’t want to be brave and strong and just because I’m not crumbling at your feet doesn’t mean I’m not screaming inside or laughing at one of our private jokes. I read to her, bathed her, hauled her brother, friends and her everywhere and loved and love her with the same fire she chose to extinguish in herself, asking me in her farewell note to “Go do what you love like I aspired to do.” Well, I love you Taylor and your brother. I modeled my advocacy work for you and you followed. I laughed and loved and you loved and laughed and struggled. I am most floored now when I look back at old letters, papers, reminders of her struggles. And, I could not save her and she made her choice. I can’t explain everything that I go through without her. I can only hold onto the memories and ride these waves, float on, drown a little, and lay in the sand waiting to take a breath before I have to face the world again and explain myself.

The Truth And Death

Frantically, I pushed and pulled soggy and slippery logs around the flow of water cascading past the tiny fencing that keeps our little pond safe. The fence acts as a barrier but there was too much rain, too much water last night as I discovered this early morning. Desperately, I clinged to long and awkward logs and tried to avoid the briars that cut into my legs. I shed my sandals, not knowing the mess, the slippery mud I was walking into. The raging storm and torrential rains the night before filled the land around us, the tiny creeks rushed on and here at the pond I couldn’t stop the overflow. We travel the tiny bridge, now halfway covered in water to a small trail we made just the day before. The bridge lies over another tiny creek very much alive this morning. The trail takes us past the swampy area of logs and grasses, home to a plethora of bugs, birds landing for a nice fish, turtles and smaller fish that swim close enough to grab an insect landing on the water. This marshy area is one of my favorite and completely under water.

I ignored the swamp, gone for now and went back to my task, this time pulling a dolly, collecting rocks, walking through spider webs, covered in mud just the way I like it. The dolly has a box strapped to the bottom for me to pull my rocks to gardens and this time to the waterfall. Make it stop. I want it to stop. I placed the rocks strategically and moved the smaller pieces of wood. Leaks sprang and water found its way the same as it had before I started. I worked harder, calm and determined to save my pond that was, in truth, not in any sort of danger. Why wasn’t I thinking of the natural order of things? I thought of a blog I had written a few years ago entitled Water Finds A Way, one that I’m sure I discarded at some point and remembered that I wasn’t stopping a thing. In fact, I was only missing out on the beauty.

I asked Taylor from her heaven to guide me to some rocks that I could carry with my dolly and end this maddening flow. Somehow it works every time that I find what I’m looking for and I held a new passion that if I moved these puzzle pieces from Mother Nature herself, the water would stop leaving the pond, leaving me. The pond would be full, damn the swamp. Rocks replaced sticks that replaced heavy logs and nothing was working out. It was a maddening puzzle with three dead fish staring at me as if to relay the message that I am not in control in this environment.

The little waterfall dumped over into a small gully about 3 feet below and joined happily with the fast-paced stream produced in these times, one of many streams, gullies, and natural ponds that appear, clean and life-giving. Even on top of the trails in the woods, small ponds at least 6 feet round can be found and are found by the dogs. The three fish, unlucky to have been swept around my work site were not lucky and died on the branches that laid matter-of factly at the top of the waterfall. That’s the truth of nature and for me, there was no sadness, no empathy as I’ve learned to watch the birds, turtles, raccoons, or whatever manner of wildlife that will sustain itself on the fish. I couldn’t stop the truth.

I stopped suddenly and sat upright. I observed my surroundings. I love the sound of waterfalls. I bought two of them after Taylor passed over.  I looked at the pond, full and more clear than usual, glistening in the soft light of morning. Standing slowly in the muck I walked back to the house, observing the absurdity of the covered bridge and the marsh that must and will return to a drier environment in a day or so.  My shoulder tickled with the leftover spider web I walked through. I worked hard and stopped nothing. I gathered my shoes, dolly, and put my tools away. I ended the mission with a clear mind, no resistance, only acceptance. Lesson learned.

What did the Zen card say yesterday, the one that held the word Truth on one side, the one that I carried with me into my bedroom only for a sad but brief moment, stifled at the law of nature, of the unjust, the law that was written? I couldn’t stop the water. I shouldn’t stop the water. That was the lesson? The truth is that everything is in order and I am not supposed to try to stop it because the bridge will be passable, the bullfrogs will sing, the dragonflies will mate and the pond will overflow until it returns to its order. The birds will land again and the bullfrogs will hide out in their grasses.

The card reads:

What Is, Is.

What IS Not, Is Not.

No Amount Of

WISHING Or

Wanting Can Change

That Simple Fact.

I didn’t hang my head as I sat to record the happenings of a few minutes ago. Taylor, my daughter, is gone from this physical world. I was reminded yesterday that on my path and only in the future will I be able to heal and draw her strength to live in her honor, to give in her absence all of the light and love and laughter that she gave. The truth is that now, I’ll grieve and forever I’ll grieve but I cannot be broken in her divine presence. I can’t stop the truth, I can’t stop the water from flowing or the tears I’ll certainly shed for the rest of my life in my hunger and desperation in missing her.

Accepting the Truth doesn’t mean I must not mourn. For me, though, I can learn in time to accept just the simple fact that in the physical form, she’s not coming back. I can learn to embrace life on other terms and I can live with sadness and despair that will never escape but dissipate as I embrace my Self living my life in service to others as she did and so much emulated in me. I’m sure the water is still flowing out of the pond, maybe cleaning up a bit, soaking the ground of the marsh and bringing new life. I think I’ll put my boots on this time and watch the flow, listen to the waterfall, think of my daughter and what she may be doing today, who she may be helping from her heaven. I’ll sit quietly and reflect, walk the trails and rediscover the water flowing through them while the dogs crash into the small ponds and wander up the rock beds in the cool rushing streams. The truth about death is that you can’t change the past any more than you can change the flow of water, the rain, or the natural order of things. The only change we can make is how we see those waterfalls.

She Is Bliss

She is BLISS.

She is the warmth of the sun, caressing my face with her soft hands.

I can see her sweet smile and gentle soul looking at me with my eyes closed.

She is the quiet of the moon and stars, the black of night in the infinite sky.

She floats and dances in her bliss, welcome to come and go into and away from galaxies and Earth.

She is the dance in the butterfly and the sway in the branches.

She is the intangible love I’ve found in nature for my entire life.

My bliss is She.

A deer with tender and trepid footsteps, a frog leaping into a pond.

Baby piglets, puppies, her own dogs that receive my love with and for her and for me.

She is love.

How wondrous to be free from this earthbound strapping and trapping of the sensitive mind, the delicate flower of innocence that she is has been revealed and she is free from this place.

She smiles now where there was angst.

She touches with delicacy the lost or hurting.

She soars in and out of the dimensions.

She suffers no more but laughs out loud no more. I can’t hold her. I can’t touch her or help her or talk to her or call her.

She is with me and yet, I am unaware.

There is a cruelty in this pain, an unrecognized beauty in her freedom.

The reconciliation came for her when she broke free of her cocoon that appeared to the human to be death.

She found her beauty, her soul, her true spirit. She flies high in bliss and touches down with no fear, no insecurity, no confusion, no pain…no pain…no pain.

How selfish is the physical, the mother, the living on earth after she has transcended and will continue to transcend into more and more BLISS?

The human experience is unavoidable. The long nights of lying in the fetal position, sobbing with uncontrollable spasms as the physical bodies who love her anguish and physiologically change to adapt to this world without her and to her new and complete form cannot be avoided.

Methods are introduced to ease the pain and aid in the minute understanding or acceptance or even the fragment of joy for her that she no longer suffers here but soars into the everything that is Universe, that is God, that is her true form, that is spirit. But, they are fleeting as the pain drowns me in tidal waves, leaves me choking, and allows me to breathe for a few days after it subsides.

The anguish of desire to tear apart and dismantle the physical from the soul is maddening. My hands want to grip my chest, tear it apart to open the green and red and indigo, to open to feel her in her new form. See her with my heart. See her with my heart. My broken and decimated heart. The one thing that could free me is the only thing keeping me away from her.

Foreign, unable to cope, much less morph into an enlightened human this feeling of ripping at the chest to see her with the heart, not the eyes. The panic that ensues day after day of desperate searching for a way to communicate through the pain.

Jealousy, envy, desire, desperation take the place of the bond we shared. That was my daughter. I made her. She and I were entwined and now she is here and everywhere and I can’t reach her. My joy comes from others who can and do reach her or the people she reaches. I feel defeated. Left out.

She is BLISS. Love her. Trust her. Know her in her new form. Learn patience and feel abundance with the love of the people present in life who need each other now more than ever.

The constant struggle between being surrounded by her love and struggling to love her as the only way I know is constant because I cannot love her in the physical and I cannot escape the torturous pain in me. I don’t know how.

I don’t know how.

My eyes strain as I look too hard, try too hard, am ungrateful, tearing the world apart seeking her, raging, screaming, playing little reels of tape that allow me to see myself with her instead of playing out my sacred contract. I want to remember all of her and I wonder if my memories are just suspended or are they leaving me?

I search for her and she is BLISS. I try to remind myself that she is BLISS. Be joyous and thankful and loving. Be kind and understanding and patient. All while writhing and screaming inside the heart that can and should and one day must open to see her in her new form. I can’t and I must.

She is BLISS

She is BLISS

She is EVERYTHING

She is EVERYWHERE

She is HERE

She is ME

I am HER.

I fall exhausted, the physical world being only a necessity to see through my contract with my sisters and brothers of this dimension, my son, my love, my family. I crawl on my knees through the days and nights, finding scraps of happiness, proof in her love. She cradles me as I cry.

I still feel her growing inside me, holding her as a newborn, suckling at my breast. I see her walking, talking, observing, struggling, hurting, helping, loving. I don’t have another way to view her as I beg on my hands and knees for mercy, for a glimpse of her from my heart….tear it from my chest and replace it with love and understanding. Be happy for her, show her the unconditional love I promised.

She is BLISS. Love her in her BLISS.