Halloween, Taylor-style

I guess you’re impressed with qualities you admire in yourself and in my case, I admired my daughter’s  independent views on a few issues that we not only agreed upon but I think she may have listened to me at some point so I felt a deep and abiding ribbon that wrapped us together beautifully. We and she and she made it all look so natural.

Taylor and Tommy have always participated in Halloween. I loved to hand out candy and the kids usually went with their father to gather far too many treats. It was a dad thing for them and it was good for them. I loved the creativity of their decision-making for costume. Tommy was a firefighter one year and Taylor, for some reason, maybe because it’s only been less than a year…I just can’t think that far back. I do remember that as the kids got older, they went with friends or in Tommy’s case didn’t go at all, like a lot of growing kids. Taylor, though dressed up until her last Halloween when she was only 21. I wonder who she would have been this year.

 

 

I still have some of their costumes. Tommy was Woodstock and Taylor was Snoopy. She loved 101 Dalmatians so it worked. Then, my mind jumps to Tommy in a long cape and sword and Taylor as a cute Alice in Wonderland. I feel like I was kind of set up on a soul level, especially with this movie. She loved it. I have that costume and it was just her thing to dress up every year even until last year, her last year. My last year with her and Tommy. She was Pocahontas one time and told everyone the facts about the Disney movie. I completed an excellent class in History that took us to Colonial Williamsburg so Taylor knew all about Pocahontas and refused to watch the movie when I told her. I loved that.

Taylor spent her Halloweens out. We had parties for everything at our house, any excuse all through their childhoods and it was always just kids and me and it was always uproariously funny with Taylor laughing the loudest. But, for Halloween she went out. And, dressed up in cute costumes…Taylor-style. She just never wanted to be the dirty teacher or dirty anything. Her opinion was made known to these girls that they need to respect themselves or they will lose respect of any man. Her choice and the way she saw her own identity.

 

Taylor never came home drunk, either. We’re both terrible drinkers and she didn’t like to feel out of control. She went to parties, some weren’t the best locations or groups, but she left when she needed to. But, I thought it was cool that she didn’t identify parties as places to lose your mind. She noticed how people look at act. She wanted to stay alive driving. I think she probably went for the food and picked up some food on the way to the party and on the way home. It was her thing.

We did buy pumpkins and we have been to pumpkin patches. The kids weren’t into Charlie Brown much but we did watch it when I could beg them annoyingly enough. This year, someone bought a pumpkin for me because Taylor loved Halloween. I brought out all her costumes I could find. I was amazed to find that one of her boxes contained Tommy’s sword from so very long ago. She also kept his name badge from his first job. She didn’t always say it, but she was so sentimental.

 

Taylor was sensitive and loved scary movies. What? I didn’t understand it and frankly, when I finally convinced her that the 80’s version of Poltergeist was terrifying, she and a friend watched it in the basement with the lights off. Not me, I don’t like scary movies. I could hear them laughing all the way upstairs. I guess the cinematography was pretty outdated. Tomorrow night I’ll be alone and silent on Halloween, not knowing which stockings go with the shoes or how to help her with her hair or of course, shape her eyebrows last minute. Halloween is Taylor’s favorite holiday. Tomorrow, I need to do something to honor her, even if I feel like I’m drowning. I’ll dress up and read books to kids. I’ll just love her and Tommy and all of the rest of my “kids.”

Paradox

I feel paralyzed. Like there is a hand on my chest. Hard push against Me. I feel grounded but not Grounded. The thoughts go around in my mind and I try to examine even the most rudimentary of ruminations but I can’t keep up. I can’t speak.

I know there is something right because I can work and I’m good at my job and good for the kids and the schools and I like it. I know there is something wrong because I question my job, wondering if it’s too much emotionally. I see a girl with long hair or simply watch one struggle with a math test and she’s tiny and she bring me her work. Her name is Taylor. I give her the attention and the love I would have given my Taylor but the pain etches somewhere in me. Can I give without wanting in return?

There is something right because I still want to be needed and loved and entertained. There’s something wrong because I don’t hear my phone or see any cars in the driveway and feel abandoned. The emotional mind versus the logical mind. It's absurd. I need this solitude to grieve.

And, I’m supposed to know, to KNOW that we are all one aspect of the Universe or of God and that this separation of form, of Taylor no more, no more, no more….sends me gasping for air and wishing for and end to it all. We are supposed to know that we are still together a spiritual being having a human what? Experience? No, sometimes I cannot hear that. That equals acceptance and promises freedom. But, I want to rage and the Ego is so massive. Steps in to keep me in the shadows. I miss her physically. She is no more, no more, no more. She is a memory and part of my education is to learn to live in the present and that she is in the present and with me presently and the freedom is knowing how to love her for Her without the form.

 

I can’t touch her long hair, smell it, brush it like when she was a little girl. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. This will subside, I heard. I can already be redirected and the my Purpose is to learn this so that I can help people through it in whatever way I can and hopefully that will look like NOT having to go through it as much.

I think I’m meant to thrash and be alone for most of my time. Maybe more time with companionship during the day would be less maddening. But, I must experience it, right? Grieving is normal, right? The feeling of dying inside? Some monks observe the deceased in morgues. Just sit there in the stillness observing, looking at death. No judgement.

In all other times and places I can be trusted to move through the day and love whoever is with me. I know Taylor felt that. She put on a mask. She laughed. She was angry. She was overwhelmed, joyful, strong, proud, fearless and broken. How can You make perfection broken? Why MUST the ties that bound us, wove us into each other, her at my breast, on my hip, by my side…why must we have been that interwoven? Because I have a purpose? I had a purpose. You, Taylor were my purpose and you always will be but at this time, I must be carried. Because the thought of never seeing you again for the rest of my days comes with complete disintegration of my duties and roles in everyone else’s lives. You trumped the world, my daughter. And, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just broken.

 

I know it’s time to pour my heart and soul into my sister and my family, dogs, son, job. But, I can’t get up. Because there is a hand on my chest forcing me to witness life through the eyes of the broken. I actually understand now why she did what she did. It was wrong and it was a split decision and it would have been ok or she would have suffered forever. But, we could have fought together. I’m ashamed that I don’t want to stay or can’t think of the people I’m supposed to want to stay for. I’ll find a way so I can teach the way. I’ll find a way so I can teach the truth of the suffering and the witnessing of madness, sorrow, and a questionable need for love from others so strongly that any and every Thing in the world of form is abandonment. Shock. I’ll find a way to keep someone here or to SCREAM from the mountaintops what Borderline is. Why we need to fund the cure. She deserved to love herself like I love her. Stability in one regard seems so out of reach. So, I’ll march on. Hide in the bathrooms and cry, return with a smile and a book to read.

I feel paralyzed. Like there is a hand on my chest. Hard push against Me. I feel grounded but not Grounded. The thoughts go around in my mind and I try to examine even the most rudimentary of ruminations but I can’t keep up. I can’t speak.

 

I know there is something right because I can work and I’m good at my job and good for the kids and the schools and I like it. I know there is something wrong because I question my job, wondering if it’s too much emotionally. I see a girl with long hair or simply watch one struggle with a math test and she’s tiny and she bring me her work. Her name is Taylor. I give her the attention and the love I would have given my Taylor but the pain etches somewhere in me. Can I give without wanting in return?

There is something right because I still want to be needed and loved and entertained. There’s something wrong because I don’t hear my phone or see any cars in the driveway and feel abandoned. The emotional mind versus the logical mind.

And, I’m supposed to know, to KNOW that we are all one aspect of the Universe or of God and that this separation of form, of Taylor no more, no more, no more….sends me gasping for air and wishing for and end to it all. We are supposed to know that we are still together a spiritual being having a human what? Experience? No, sometimes I cannot hear that. That equals acceptance and promises freedom. But, I want to rage and the Ego is so massive. Steps in to keep me in the shadows. I miss her physically. She is no more, no more, no more. She is a memory and part of my education is to learn to live in the present and that she is in the present and with me presently and the freedom is knowing how to love her for Her without the form.

 

I can’t touch her long hair, smell it, brush it like when she was a little girl. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. This will subside, I heard. I can already be redirected and the my Purpose is to learn this so that I can help people through it in whatever way I can and hopefully that will look like NOT having to go through it as much.

I think I’m meant to thrash and be alone for most of my time. Maybe more time with companionship during the day would be less maddening. But, I must experience it, right? Grieving is normal, right? The feeling of dying inside? Some monks observe the deceased in morgues. Just sit there in the stillness observing, looking at death. No judgement.

In all other times and places I can be trusted to move through the day and love whoever is with me. I know Taylor felt that. She put on a mask. She laughed. She was angry. She was overwhelmed, joyful, strong, proud, fearless and broken. How can You make perfection broken? Why MUST the ties that bound us, wove us into each other, her at my breast, on my hip, by my side…why must we have been that interwoven? Because I have a purpose? I had a purpose. You, Taylor were my purpose and you always will be but at this time, I must be carried. Because the thought of never seeing you again for the rest of my days comes with complete disintegration of my duties and roles in everyone else’s lives. You trumped the world, my daughter. And, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just broken.

 

I know it’s time to pour my heart and soul into my sister and my family, dogs, son, job. But, I can’t get up. Because there is a hand on my chest forcing me to witness life through the eyes of the broken. I actually understand now why she did what she did. It was wrong and it was a split decision and it would have been ok or she would have suffered forever. But, we could have fought together. I’m ashamed that I don’t want to stay or can’t think of the people I’m supposed to want to stay for. I’ll find a way so I can teach the way. I’ll find a way so I can teach the truth of the suffering and the witnessing of madness, sorrow, and a questionable need for love from others so strongly that any and every Thing in the world of form is abandonment. Shock. I’ll find a way to keep someone here or to SCREAM from the mountaintops what Borderline is. Why we need to fund the cure. She deserved to love herself like I love her. Stability in one regard seems so out of reach. So, I’ll march on. Hide in the bathrooms and cry, return with a smile and a book to read.