Trying

Tomorrow is Minnow's first birthday. A whole year has passed since he launched himself out of my body with the kind of determination that's becoming more and more apparent in his personality by the day. He's gone from a shrieking infant to a shrieking toddler in twelve short but exhausting months. As he runs the length of the kitchen and living room, legs still stout and stiff, mouth wide, two charging fists leading his way yelling a continual yell till he gets to you and guffaws. So proud of himself. So certain in what it is that he wants and when I fail to understand immediately what that thing is he shouts it out, twists and turns, trying with every inch of his body to communicate. I love it. I love his fierceness, his stubbornness, his undoubtable character. I love that he is already so much an individual and that I get to experience his making of himself. I get to be witness to his life. I am so blessed.

At the Celebration of Kristin's life saturday her mother spoke so eloquently of the blessing that Kristin bestowed upon her. To have been so lucky to have carried such a soul in her womb, to have grown with her, to have been given the chance to love and be loved by someone so special was such a blessing to her. In the middle of what will be her life's tragedy Maria spoke of being blessed. She was the strongest I've ever seen anyone and it shook me. It scared me that I may not be that strong. That I can't seem to find a way to lighten my heart. The idea of celebrating anything right now seems so difficult. I should be planning what kind of cake to make tomorrow, I should be wrapping a gift I've yet to buy, I should be humming happy birthday and remembering the beautiful moment I laid eyes on my Thatcher for the first time. And yet every thought I have is tainted with sorrow, with regret, with fear. I'm trying, I really am. I'm trying to be strong like Maria because I do recognize how lucky and blessed and fortunate I am to have these children to love. But death is hanging on my heart, it's strangling me every time I try to smile.

So I add guilt to this mourning mix. I'm sorry Minnow that your first birthday is singed with my sadness. I'm sorry Bean that I can't give you the attention you deserve, my mind is a million miles away but this love doesn't leave you for an instant.

My Soul Mama

This week I lost one of the most deeply loving people in my life. I can't write it or say it without feeling such a deep ache it makes a hole inside and threatens to drag me in. I can't look at my kids without thinking they'll never know her. I can't think about anything at all except her. I've been obsessively checking facebook for other people's pictures of her. It's the only place I can keep seeing her. We've been friends for something like 15 years now, half of which we haven't spent much time in eachother's physical presence. Although she always managed to be there for the important moments; my babyshower, my wedding party. That never stopped us from constantly texting and emailing "love you mama" or "miss you soooo much". Kristin was a hard girl to pin down. She always had lots going on in her life and I know I've been guilty of the same procrastination. Of course I always just felt like she would be there. That there'd be time to catch up. Last wednesday, April 6th, the day before she began to get sick, she wrote to me. Before she threw up over and over and her insulin got out of hand. Two days before her sugar shot up to 1000. Before she collapsed on the floor in front of her mother and father and boyfriend. Before her mother performed cpr for 10 minutes while the ambulance raced not fast enough towards her house. She wrote "MISSYOUSISTER>>LOVE YOU SO MUCH". I never wrote back. I read it and I didn't respond because there was no urgency to. Because I could write the next day or the day after that. Because I could text her the next week that I was coming down for Easter. And probably because I was upset she hadn't shown up two weeks before for dinner with me and Kelly. She had had to work. Last friday when I got home from doing god knows what I got a message from her sister that she was in the hospital and to call. She told me the morning's events and though I cried in immediate fear I really believed she'd be ok. Jason got home and I walked a few miles to the chapel up the street. I lit a candle and I prayed. The bible was open to Isaiah 50:9 "awake, awake". Kristin was unconscious but from what I could gather I thought it was from being so heavily sedated. The next day I drove to Connecticut, deposited the babes into my mother's care and drove to the hospital. Her mother, Maria, her father, Tim, and her sister, Karin, comforted me. They held me and told me it would be ok. I gathered myself in and said of course it would. When Maria and Tim led me into her room I was unprepared. Kristin lay on a raised hospital bed, no blanket, just a gown and tubes and wires everywhere. Her body moved with the bleeps and blips of machines. Her eyes were forced from her head. I held her hand, kissed it and then collapsed into it. Her parents stood by her, her mother talking to a tactless social worker. Later, I left the hospital, the world where people stay in limbo for an eternity. Waiting for results they'll wish they never recieved. Wanting it all to end but clinging to the pain of life and it's simple threadbare balance. Outside it was sunny, and cool. A dream world where people put money into parking meters and made tuna sandwiches. Where Kristin was supposed to be lying in the grass somewhere smiling or driving with the windows down singing to some old school Jeff Buckley or some new up and coming band she was reveiwing for work. I didn't want to be out of the hospital. I resented the world without her and I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt being in it. I returned to the hospital the next day and the day after. Every time there was worse news. The cat scans were bad. She had undergone hypothermic therapy to basically freeze her brain to prevent further damage and now they were warming her up. Her body had a hard time maintaining it's temperature. She couldn't breathe on her own. When Karin called me to tell me it looked like she suffered severe brain injury my mother had to hold me like a child. I couldn't breathe. It was the beginning of the end of hope. Monday I arrived back and was for the first time able to spend time alone with Kristin. I whispered to her as I stroked her black straw hair that I wanted to cuddle in a bed with her and my babies. I wanted so badly to hear her voice. Her laugh. I wanted her to grab me towards her and hug me like she always did, so fiercley loving. I held her hand and then rubbed her feet and legs. I tried to lay down beside her a little but there were too many tubes. The neurologist was giving her parents and boyfriend the news that the last mri came back and there was nothing left of hope. They had promised we'd have till friday but now... Her parents went to the chapel and I comforted Eric. Covered in blood from a nose bleed he got from crying too hard. I held his hand and felt his world just disappear. That night was Kristin's last in this world. I give thanks I was able to say goodbye, to tell her how much I loved her, to be a little bit more of her life's story. I hope she heard it all, I hope she still does. I've been reeling these days with pain like I've never felt and whoever said time heals all wounds never new Kristin Anderson. The passing of these minutes makes me ill. It feels like I'm being swallowed by a tide that taking me farther and farther away from her. There's no lesson here. No satisfying end to this. Just another way to make me face this loss and process it. All I can keep saying is I love you mama. I love you and I miss you soooo much.

A Wild Undiscovered

My disposition is feeling the gravitational pull of the sun and it's rays are just beginning to bleach out winter's negativity. Yesterday I took the kids and dog on a hike. Minnow sqwuaked the whole way up and down as Beanie, Percy and I panted. We drew in the new world re-imagining itself in waterfalls and patches of moss. We sat in the middle of the path and dug our fingers into last year's leaves. Bean asked who put that log in the middle of the path. I told her it fell. It just simply fell over because it was old. I didn't feel the need to add the word dead. It fell because it was old and the wind pushed it. The wind was stronger than that huge tree. I watched her as she thought about it and then proceeded to clean up the path. I waited for another question and when it didn't come I let her be. It's such a short time when the world can seem undiscovered. When we can make of it what we will. I don't want to answer all her questions before she asks them. I want her to root out her own genesis of the world. Before the world forces it's version of life's story upon her.