Uncovering One's Eyes

These days I'm walking in a neck-deep solution of vivid memories and raw emotion. On the one hand, I continue to be deeply grateful for all the things listed in my previous blog post, and then some. I truly am. I write in my journal every night, giving thanks for each and every blessing, but the cold hard fact that Erin is gone still takes me out at the knees. The blessings are often the outstretched hand that leads the way on the constant route toward survival of this devastation, but at other times it feels as though I'm reaching into air.  Groping.  Grief often has to be an entity in and of itself.  Erin died. I'm heartbroken. Nothing can erase that.

And now Christmas is coming. Christmas. Erin died. Be joyful. Shop. Erin died. Spend money. Buy gifts. Plan meals. Erin died. Bring out the boxes of decorations, carefully chosen throughout the years. But Erin died!!!

Christmas... Four children.

Four stockings my mother stitched 

in time for each baby's first Christmas.

In 2006 we experienced the shock and horror of the cancer diagnosis on December 15. Those words that finally gave us the answer we sought for so many weeks to the question, "Who took away our daughter and replaced her with this fretful teenager who has all these seemingly unrelated and bizarre symptoms? For the love of God, all she wants to eat are clementines!" Cancer was beginning to steal her away, that's who it was.

Christmas? Was there a Christmas in 2006?
I know Erin was admitted to the hospital
on December 27 for her first chemo treatment.

We have no photos from that year to help me recall Christmas.

Not one.

Now, I'm working hard to stay grounded through this same stretch of time, amidst memories of the final weeks of Erin's life just a year ago; the shock of the events of that Friday (on a day that I painfully learned to never ever again say the words ~ things couldn't possibly get worse) on the heels of a perfect Thanksgiving (perfect relative to cancer-life, of course).  A time of bringing her home after an awful week spent in the hospital, to live for two more weeks and then die with all of us surrounding her.  A time of honoring her wishes and ensuring her comfort, of readying ourselves to let go. We had no choice but to let go. I did let go at the time, but it seems harder to stop clutching her now than it did then, when exhaustion and a sense of relief for Erin's much-deserved peace offered numbness and acceptance on my part. Emptiness and sadness are standing prominent now, a gaping hole of intense longing.  My stomach hurts.

I've been advised that the idea, the goal, is to remember the events and not relive them. Well I can't do that just one short year away from this experience that shattered me to bits.  Goal ~ unattainable at the present time.  I walk through each day, facing straight into the thick of it all, and yes, I'm reliving all the nightmarish details.  I saw so many things that no one else did.

You see, last year as sick as Erin was and in spite of the havoc the cancer wreaked upon her poor little body, she was HERE smiling at me, giving me a focal point, telling me she loved me as I tucked her in each night, greeting visitors graciously, asking me to put special Christmas decorations in certain places so she could easily see them...

I was tuned to her every move, as my cousin just wrote, "to the flutter of her eyelashes". Precisely.

Last Saturday, we went out and bought two Christmas trees - one for our home and one for Erin's grave. Her tree is perfect. It's a little Frasier fir, and we decorated it with wooden snowflakes and few happy snowmen.

Who does this? Parents whose children have died, that's who.

Families who are fumbling to make the pain bearable,

the injustice somewhat tolerable,

the emptiness a little less vacuous.

And sweet friends visit and leave flowers

as they also try to sort through their own personal loss,

and I can't even begin to imagine how this feels for them.

It's often easier to divert around rather than go directly through pain; to submerge oneself in work or play or sleep.  I've done that too, and that's part of living and moving forward, but I think there's a lot to be said for the willingness to be vulnerable, to be open to what is before one's eyes.  I know I need to enter into it rather than escape or detour. It's all there, whether I pause to look or not.  Whether I utter a word about it or clamp my mouth shut, the reality of it surfaces. I gave birth to four children. Four. Stoicism is great up to a point, but the shell eventually cracks.  I'm human.

We're reminded at our Compassionate Friends meetings that grief is work, hard work.  Suffering is individual, unique.  There isn't a formula and it can't be done quickly.  But you know what?  Erin is worth every single tear I shed.

There is no question of getting beyond it. The little boat enters the dark fearful gulf and our only cry is to escape - "put me on land again."

But it's useless. Nobody listens. The shadowy figure rows on.
One ought to sit still and uncover one's eyes.

- Katherine Mansfield

My eyes are wide open, and I see it all before me.

Do you see it all too?