Thursday, December 22, 2011

three

It is too warm to be her birthday. The sun didn't rise and set the sky into otherworldly pinks and oranges. It didn't humble me at God's grace. It was just suddenly bright grey at 7:17 am.

We didn't light candles, or tell stories, or feast last night as I had imagined. No one but me wanted to remember her in that way. Everyone seemed worn down and emotional. I don't want to force grief rituals on the kids, or my husband. That is what I want our grief to be--a rhythm we follow as a family. Every year is different. Rather than candles and solstice, Bea climbed on my lap and asked me to tell her the story of when she was born. And then I told her the story of Lucy's birth and death, and then Thor's birth. My husband cried gently as I told them the stories of our family.

After they went to sleep, I wrapped gifts for five hours. Everyone's gifts, even my own. I wrapped gifts from everyone--us, Santa, my mother, my father, my husband's family. I just wrapped and wrapped until it was her birthday. Then I cleaned up my workspace, and walked outside.

The clouds covered most of the sky, but there was one star I noticed. Maybe it was Lyra's star. It was so bright. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I sat on the steps and tried to meditate, but I kept thinking about how much of a failure I have been at this grief thing. How exacting it was. Someone told me that that is what being an alcoholic is about, and now that I am not drinking, I will heal from her death. I thought about how someone I loved told me that I disturbed them with my grief, that I had made her death a cottage industry. I thought about how much I failed at that friendship, and how much that friendship failed me.*  I try to accept that sometimes people don't like me, and I fail at things. Like I failed at bringing her into the world. And civilians think grief is something you heal from, like it is the goal of my life, or a comfort to think I am ailing now with something temporary.  I thought about all the lovely words everyone said to us on Facebook, in emails, on my Glow post. That warmed me. Then I felt like a failure for focusing on all the negative emotions, rather than just that. What is wrong with me that I can't just focus on all I have? Why can I not be filled with gratitude? Communing with my daughter wasn't exactly working. I was thinking of everything but her.

I didn't even want to sit there in nature, in the dark, and think about her. I just wanted to run out of my skin, away from those words, and that feeling of shame and guilt and failure. The feelings of not being gracious enough, or thankful enough. Someone said to me yesterday that my kids needed me, and I needed to hug the ones that were here. I do hug them. Every day. Lucy gets this one moment these days where the grief is hers, where I am wholly hers.

She never belonged to me. But I always belonged to her and Beezus and Thor. Lucia belonged to the sky and the fire and the wind. I don't know her. I never knew her. I miss everything I didn't know about her. I miss everything I did know about her. I hear her in the chimes in the Spring, feel her warmth in the wood fire that heats our house, smell her in the nag champa that we light to remember her.


I prayed a small thank you for the sky and went inside. Then I prayed to feel her, or have a dream of her.

Please, God, I just want to feel her again. Not in the wind, or the trees, but her. The weight of her in my arms. I want her to nuzzle, to open her eyes. I want to see her live.

I woke up four hours later. Unrested. Sad. The children were awake and wanting to play. I had no dreams. I just shuffled my way downstairs, poured coffee. The kids and I painted in the studio. We watched the sky turn brighter. No sunrise, just brighter.

I haven't cried about her death in a long time. This space is where I come to grieve, like a small sitting room in the gigantic hypothetical farmhouse where we can afford rooms to dedicate to a single emotion. The joy room. The meditation room. The grief room. That room has with a shrine to her, a large leather chair with a broken-in quilt. There is a table with enough room for a book and a cup of coffee, maybe my reading glasses. A box of tissue. The light is soft and a picture window with a seat facing east, overlooking trees and a lake, mountains in the background. That is where the sun rises. There is a sketch pad there. A zafu, a Buddha and a jizo. Windchimes that move indiscriminately. A fireplace.

I don't think we ever heal from our children's death. I will always be sad that Lucia died. That seems more normal than trying to heal. Healing is not even my fucking goal. I just want to have a day like I am having, I suppose. Solemn with pockets of joy and sadness and a feeling of her, or the feeling of a lack of her, all around me.


Thank you for being present with the anniversary of our daughter's death, and her birthday. Thank you for the notes, emails, wall posts, comments. I don't have to space to express the full depth of my gratitude. Your love warms me, holds me, makes me feel loved. Thank you.




* I am not sharing these things because I want you to tell me how good I am, or how wrong anyone else is. I don't think any of this is an abnormal part of grief. This is grief for me. It is guilt and shame and fear and nonacceptance and anger and sadness and restlessness. All the emotions and obsessions from feeling the weight of her death, they are all little emotional avoidances. Maybe you can relate to that too. 

22 comments:

  1. I hope today brings you peace, moments of introspection along with moments of grace. The thing with grief is that it is fluid. It's not like we grieve, and then we don't, and we are healed. It ebbs and flows, and every person has his or her rhythm. Thank you for allowing us to help you honor Lucy's memory.

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  2. Healing does feel completely beside the point when it comes to grief. I'm sorry you're missing your girl Lucy, and I know how easy it is to fret and pick at a cruel comment until it seems bigger and more significant than all of the really important things in your life. A solemn day with pockets of joy sounds like the perfect way to honor her.

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  3. I know it's a struggle, Angie. It's all hard, missing her, the longing, the expectations others have of us, trying to balance what we have against what we've lost. I remember her. Lucy.

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  4. So much truth here.
    Last night I lit too many candles for too many of our children and it's all just so wrong.
    I hoped for a beautiful sunrise today, but there was none here either.
    I hate that anyone expects us to be healed.Those people know nothing.
    x

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  5. Your exactly right!!! Who are we to judge anothers grief? Its hard, its raw its real!! We wont ever "heal" just cope different I think. Praying for you and.your sweet angel today!

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  6. What an incredibly powerful post. I guess I just don't understand people telling others that there is a right or wrong way to mourn. I think if you are doing what you need to do, you can't be a failure.

    I was so taken with the idea of a house where different rooms are dedicated to different emotions. My happy room, my grief room, etc.

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  7. Lots of love to you. Thinking of your Lucy.

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  8. "I don't think we ever heal from our children's death. I will always be sad that Lucia died. That seems more normal than trying to heal. Healing is not even my fucking goal. I just want to have a day like I am having, I suppose. Solemn with pockets of joy and sadness and a feeling of her, or the feeling of a lack of her, all around me."

    Oh Angie... no truer words have ever been spoken... the balance of joy and grief is such a challenge... love to you always and always remembering Lucia.

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  9. Yes I can relate to those emotions. They're not great (fun) to feel and yet, before I caught up on these blogs I was reading a forum with a thread on fear and anxiety, one of the posts was suggesting about 'sitting with' the emotions, feeling them, seeing how big they are, seeing where they come from. Allowing them.
    I think thats entirely right and healthy. Have said similar too - I can't imagine NOT feeling sad about losing our babies, but I CAN imagine the sadness morphs and changes intensity as time passes.

    I read your post at Glow yesterday and was blown away, but couldn't think what to say in the comments section. Can't really formulate these sentences today properly, as you can probably tell, but wanted to make a mark of acknowledgment. Remembering Lucia with you. Big love

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  10. Light and Peace. She has the most beautiful name, your Lucy. I hope you find some tonight.

    xxx

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  11. I struggled to read this. I got to the part about Lucia belonging to the sky and the fire and the wind, and then I lost it, in a way I haven't for a while. Such beautiful, poignant words. Missing our daughters profoundly, Angie.

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  12. Celebrating Lucia's precious life with you tonight Angie. I don't think we will ever be able to move away from our children's deaths. We live, we love and we always remember.. always.
    Love and light..

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  13. Sigh. Ella's 3rd is coming up, as well. I'm actually looking forward to cutting my hair for locks of love in her honor. I feel like for the first time I have a "plan" for her day. Rememerbing Lucy with you, today and always.
    Thank you for your comment on my blog. It feels weird responding to it here on this post. You made me smile, though. I was a barista in college and it was the best job ever. Never won a competition, though. Hugs.

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  14. "I just wanted to run out of my skin."

    Familiar.

    There aren't any Lucia-Paz-worthy words surfacing, even though I want them. I want to say something that will honor her - and you - like you deserve.

    This, though: your small daughter, her life - that the world might call little - sends out shock waves of truth, love, peace, hope into the far-flung hearts of far-flung people. All over the globe, literally.

    This is because of her mother, whose words fill up wordless mouths and soothe aching souls and calm restless heads.

    Without you, we would never know her. Without her, we might never know you.

    It still isn't worth it. Never can be, but you truly have a way of bringing beauty for ashes.

    Lucia Paz, you matter, you *are*, and you *always will be*.

    With love,

    Cathy in Missouri

    P.S.

    Said before, but it's true:

    "An artist is someone who suffers and creates. A critic is the same except he neither suffers nor creates." Kierkegaard

    You know who you are. And who they are.

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  15. I agree with you and all the lovely commenters who have visited here before me. Seems a lot of us are finding ourselves in a similar headspace at the moment.
    You write so beautifully about Lucia. Your words are so powerful. I just wish with all that beauty and power that you could bring her back. Seems so entirely possible.
    Love to you, Angie. Lucia Paz will never be forgotten and on the longest day of the year here, we will always remember her.
    xo

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  16. Thinking about you today, and wishing blessings and love and peace and light for you and your family.

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  17. "That is what I want our grief to be--a rhythm we follow as a family. Every year is different."

    I was nodding as I read this. It's like that here too. Almost river-like, the grief is always in motion, constant, fluid, and no two Christmases or birthdays are ever the same.

    "And civilians think grief is something you heal from, like it is the goal of my life, or a comfort to think I am ailing now with something temporary."

    Yeah, they do think that. Even I thought that, in the very early days. Those moments where I was stuck in my bed with a mountain of soggy tissues and leaking breasts. "One day," I told myself, "this will be better somehow. Not normal, but it won't hurt as much as it does now." Right.

    Sometimes I don't like to share my perspective in case anyone out there would like to keep that illusion because it is comforting after all. But here I am, at 8.5 years now, and it's still a matter of conscientiously searching out and finding the moments of joy in my daily life because they don't arrive with a bow on top on my doorstep like I'd imagined. Then when I do find those little gems, when I turn them over, a lot of them will have been marred--perfect and sparking on the top, charred black on the underside and with a huge crack in the centre. Almost every holiday, birthday, first day of school is shadowed by all we lost.

    "She never belonged to me. But I always belonged to her and Beezus and Thor. Lucia belonged to the sky and the fire and the wind. I don't know her. I never knew her. I miss everything I didn't know about her. I miss everything I did know about her."

    Beautiful.

    I don't think you're failing at this or anything else, but I understand where you're coming from. Be kind to yourself. Wishing you much peace and love.

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  18. You are so right.. we won't ever heal from their death.. we will always miss knowing them, and more importantly not. Much love to you Angie and your family. Thinking of Lucia always. :)

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  19. A little late but I wanted to let you know I was thinking of you on her day xo

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  20. I agree with you. Healing has nothing to do with not feeling sad and missing our children. This will always happen. There is no healing from this.

    Lucy and my son Alejandro left us only a few days apart, so Lucy has a special place in my heart, as if they were kindergarten friends. I will light a candle for Lucy today. Much love to you. xoxo

    PS- Thanks for including Alejandro's name.

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  21. I thought of you and Lucy and Thor and Sam and Bea. I'm home again, so I will light a candle for her. While gone for the holidays, I looked at the stars often, and thought of our babes.
    A big 'amen' to your last regular paragraph, before the italicized ones. It's summed so well, and I ended up nodding my head vigorously in agreement. <3

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  22. There is no right or wrong way to grieve, so you can't fail at it. And re: every year being different -- much as I am a stickler for ritual & tradition, I find that what we do for Katie each year has evolved over time. What doesn't change is the love and the sad sense of loss, of the hole that can never quite be filled. (((hugs))) to you & your family.

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