Incongruity

We are driving to meet friends for dinner at Mi Rancho to exchange Christmas gifts. “Kirsten died in a car accident,” I say again in my head, trying to settle with the thought. Like a scab I can’t help picking at, I open the wound again to feel the raw pain. By nine months, one might easily think that it was better than this. I would have thought so at one time, but instead it occupies my every thought. I go to bed at night thinking about it and I wake in the morning thinking about it, trying to figure out how this can be real…how I can live my old life with this new set of parameters, everything so seemingly incongruous.

“What are you going to order for dinner?” My focus is shifted for a moment…fragmented, part of it on the answer to my husband’s question, part of it on the constant set of images that repeat in my mind like a never ending slideshow. “I think I’ll get the fajitas.” Broken glass. “Me, too,” Blood. “It’ll be nice to see the Wrights.” Pronounced dead at the scene.

We drive over the spot on the road where she took her last breath. A heart shaped bed of light purple pansies, now covered with fall leaves, marks the spot. There are also flowers that people have left, the letters KIR that Lindsey painted in dayglo, a Christmas wreath made by my sister and the cross Allen made with Kirsten’s name on it in green. I barely have time to blow a kiss as we pass by. I remember when I wept here, on the side of the road, when I found pea sized pieces of the shiny red car we gave her for her birthday.

We arrive at the restaurant, the same restaurant where the four of us ate our last meal together in celebration of Michelle’s birthday on the night before the accident. As we are shown to our table, we walk past the booth where we sat. In my mind’s eye it is as if it were yesterday; what she was wearing, where we were each sitting and what we ordered. Steak fajitas will alway make me think of the autopsy report.

Michelle and Chris Wright and their two young sons, Shane and Brandon are already seated. They smile to greet us. It brings back memories of us at restaurant tables long ago with two happy little girls. But tonight, our wonderful friends have taken time out of their Christmas season to spend the evening with us and we truly appreciate it, a couple hours of blessed distraction, yet it is bittersweet…their joy is both wonderful and a reminder of the way we were and what we have lost. "Merry Christmas" says the hostess as we leave. Police officers on my doorstep.

The contradictions continue on the ride home. We pass houses decorated joyfully with colorful Christmas lights as an image of a red car, lit only from above by the spotlight of a news helicopter, flashes in my mind. "Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas" plays on the radio as, in my mind, I study pictures of an almost unrecognizable red car on the police lot. Every part of my life seems to be in direct conflict with the world around me, everything on the inside in such contrast with everything on the outside. “Are you tired?” Kenny asks. So tired.

                                    “There's no religion that could save me

                                     No matter how long my knees are on the floor

                                     Everyday it will rain”

                                                          ~Bruno Mars

In Kirsten's Room

The smell of her perfume is the first thing I notice, almost before opening the door. Mostly J’Adore but also Ed Hardey, Top Model, Dolce and Gabbana Light Blue and Daisy. She loved perfume. I inhale deeply, savoring the sweet smell that will someday also be gone. The scent overwhelms me and makes it almost impossible for me to go into her room without wanting to give up… to crawl into her bed, curl up under her covers with blankie and never come out.

“Blankie” is the blanket Kirsten laid upon as an infant. It came to our house with our friend, Tracy, who was frantically summoned to our house one night by Kenny to help with the baby Kirsten while I was at work and it ended up staying with Kirsten her whole life. Kirsten referred to blankie as a “she.” She was faded and had a hole in her when it was time to go to college, so I repaired her as well as I could and sent her off. Blankie now lies forlornly on the bed, folded so the blue heart-shaped patch is on top.

                        

                                                              

Then there are the clothes. So many clothes. The sliding doors to her closet stand open revealing clothes packed tightly on hangers, each item instantly bringing to mind a photo memorized from the hundreds of photos on facebook; the brown and pink flowered dress from the senior pictures, the long sleeve cheetah print shirt from pictures at Cami’s house, the black and white striped sweater she was wearing in the last pictures ever taken of her.

I try to chase away the memory of that March morning when I struggled in vain to find just the right outfit for my baby to wear in her casket. She would know what to wear, I needed her help with this. I had picked through the piles of clothing that had been dumped out of her suitcases when she came home for spring break, her room a sea of clothes against the pink and green backdrop of her bedroom walls, until I decided on jeans, a sheer blue and black plaid tunic style top with a black cami underneath and brown boots. The clothes are all picked up and sorted now... 

Abercrombie hoodies and Solar Planet t-shirts, jeans and cute shirts, the bright pink Shippensburg hoodie she was wearing the last time I saw her, all neatly folded and stacked on the light purple carpeting according to whether they smell like her or not. And then my heart skips a beat, in near panic, when my eyes land on the brown and pink Nike tennis shoes that she wore so often.  And the Uggs…brown, tan, blue and cheetah ones…the black ones conspicuously missing.

There are lots of pictures of friends. On one nightstand, amid Victoria Secret dogs, sits a framed picture of Kirsten in a group of girls and another of Kirsten and Marc at Sakura on his 14^th birthday. On the other nightstand, a framed picture of her dogs, Shadow and Carson, and a paperweight frame of her and Brandon dressed up for homecoming. 

Wedged into the frame of her dresser mirror are pictures of the kids she watched, Emma and Sam. She adored them, and they her. She always made time to visit them even after her job as afterschool nanny was finished. There was a photobooth picture of Brandon and Kirsten here, too, which is now with Brandon.  Stuffed animals, given to her by family and friends or won for her at the carnival by Brandon, crowd around her bed.  Her special ones…Snowy, baby Snowy and Patrick sit in their positions of honor on the bed.

Her Shippensburg lanyard with the key to “pretty girl,” (a car that no longer exists), the key to dorm 507 Mowery Hall, the "10" from graduation and the preppy pink and green key fob, monogrammed with a funky “k”, I gave her long ago, hangs inexplicably from the outside of her bathroom door, apparently not with her that night.

Passing through her pink bathroom, with its myriad of lotions and perfumes and her robe still hanging on the back of the door, I come to her other room, her computer room. Her desk and shelves still hold, sentimentally, all of the greeting cards and notes written to her by family and friends over the past years. There is a shelf full of designer, blingy sunglasses and several more pictures of her with groups of friends. The rest of the room is filled with the contents of her dorm room, the same items that not too long ago were stacked excitedly in the dining room in preparation for college: the three drawer units, one neatly packed with more clothing, the other with snacks; her like-new backpack, notebooks and homework intact; the beautiful blue floral bedding; her college artwork, her bathroom accessories and the corkboard and white board message tiles with pictures of friends and notes still on them, all now reminders of that horrible final trip back from Shippensburg with all of her belongings but not her.

 

On my way out, I decide that a person’s room says a lot about them. Hers seems to say, here lived a girl who loved everything. She loved her friends and family, she loved beauty in all of its forms… color, scent, style and organization. She loved life.

And her room also says, here not only lived a girl who loved, but was loved. Dearly.

“Goodbye, Kiki” I say softly and shut the door.

                      

                          "There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief."

                                                                  ~Aeschylus

The Tree

As my husband and I sat in the sunroom admiring the tree in the backyard we planted together in Kirsten’s memory I had a horrible thought…what if, after all of our hard work and care, the tree died? Would it be a sign that I was, in fact, as much of a failure as I felt as the parent of a child who, despite all of my hard work and care, has died?               

Two members of one of my tennis teams had purchased and delivered the tree a couple of weeks earlier. It was a pink cherry tree, symbol of the beautiful but fleeting nature of life, but looked, at this point, like tall twigs with a burlap sack at one end. We could have hired someone to plant it for us but this was special, it was for Kirsten, so we decided to plant it ourselves.

It was the first time we had planted a tree together and we wanted to do it just right. We went to the store to buy soil, mulch and shovels. We then surveyed the yard from every angle to decide on just the right spot. We decided on a spot visible from the pool area and the house and almost in a direct line from Kirsten’s bedroom window. Next came the hard work. We dug the hole, taking turns with the pick-ax and the shovels, until it was the depth specified in the directions on the tag attached to one of the naked limbs. We added the soil, carefully selected to improve the condition of the earth surrounding the new root ball, then refilled the hole and topped it with mulch to protect it, smoothing it lovingly. We had it staked to support it against strong winds and watered it daily.

But what if, in our inexperience, we had done something wrong and it didn’t make it? Overlooked some detail and now wouldn’t get to watch it mature and fulfill it’s purpose?

I tried to reason with myself that trees died sometimes no matter how carefully they were planted and cared for, that some things were out of our control. We had given it all the love and support we could to ensure its growth and give it its best chance at survival. Maybe we had done the best we could and the rest wasn’t up to us. If it dies I will try not to blame myself.

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.

                                                                                          ~John Muir

Lessons In Joy

Floating on the Seine

In July 2007, Kirsten and I were in Europe visiting relatives in Sweden and sightseeing in Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Paris. I have always been a planner. I filled our itinerary as full as  possible with historic sights and important landmarks. I had everything planned right down to the hour on a calendar that I printed and carried with me and we followed it to the tee. In our two days in Paris we saw the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre museum (which with careful research and planning I managed to get us in and out of in a half hour and at half price), the Arc de Triomphe and many other important sights.

On our first day in Paris, Kirsten noticed a tanning salon on the block where we stayed and asked if we could go tanning. Tanning was, of course, not on the itinerary. Why would we do something in Paris that we could do anytime in the U.S.? By the second day, she had bugged me so many times that I gave in and agreed to take the time out of our schedule to go tanning. We entered the tanning salon and I somehow arranged for us each to tan, in the appropriate bed and for the appropriate length of time, despite the fact that the nice young woman there spoke no English and my French was seriously lacking in tanning vocabulary. 

The tanning equipment was like none we had ever seen in the states. It was modern and colorful. There were futuristic conventional type beds and some that reclined. We marveled over the fact that the fans in the beds emitted a puff of fragrance every couple of minutes. We left feeling a sense of accomplishment at pulling this feat off on our own and a sense of connection with a local Parisian. It was an experience completely unlike the ones I had planned. It felt real. When I thought about it later, I realized it was one of the best memories of the trip. And it wouldn’t have happened if Kirsten hadn’t insisted on doing something she just felt like doing, enjoyed, instead of something that was on the list of “must sees.”

Maybe this is the secret to the elusive thing called joy. Enjoy…enjoy…live in joy. Since Kirsten’s passing, these types of memories have made me wonder if I have been missing out on some of the joy in my life while I was busy getting everything done and I resolve to enjoy more. To be in the moment more. To be present. Planning is important, but so is living.

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.”

                                                      ~Robert Brault

Kirsten at the wheel of a 747

Pink Slipped

One of the hardest parts about losing Kirsten has been the loss of my job as her mother. Like a pink slip after years of faithful work with no performance review, no explanation or retirement benefits… just the end.

After years of braiding damp hair so it would be wavy in the morning, painting cute little toenails bright colors and rushing forgotten items to school, I’m not needed for anything anymore.

I’m not needed to wake her up because she has somehow slept through her ridiculously loud alarm clock, not needed for writing excuse notes when she’s missed first period, not needed for calling doctor’s offices or hair salons to make her appointments for her.

She doesn’t need to borrow my favorite dress or necklace, she doesn’t need me to make her coffee with cream and sugar every morning and she doesn’t need me to take her on expensive shopping trips to the mall where we would share a dressing room at Victoria’s Secret or Hollister.

No glass of water (without ice) to get at bedtime, no writing projects to help with, no need to stand watch outside a bathroom stall door because she wanted to be alerted if someone came in.

Instead, I make up things to do for her.

 

 I write to her in pretty journals every night (she always loved everything to be pretty), I light scented candles (she always loved scent and always smelled so good), I plant flowers and trees (pink, the color I associate with her), I frame pictures of her (they are everywhere), I document and save everything about her life (lest I forget a single thing), I think of her (constantly), I write this blog.

These things are the closest substitute I can find for the job I used to have. They make me feel like I’m doing something. The way I used to be needed to do things. And it is the labor of them that is the reward.

They are outlets for a love that has nowhere to go.

        

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night.”

                                                      ~Edna St. Vincent Millay

                                            

Signs

A couple of nights ago, when I was feeling particularly down, I asked for a sign.  Something about the way the candlelight flickered on her urn, her beautifully fitting urn with its bright, colorful poppies…beautiful, just like her, made me feel almost other-worldly and I wondered if I asked out loud if maybe, just maybe, I could get some kind of sign…the kind other people always talk about but I never see and I wished.  I kissed her urn and went to bed hoping she would come to me in my dreams.

 I didn’t dream of her and nothing special happened until the next evening when I came home from dinner with my husband, Kenny. As I passed my dresser on the way to the closet I stopped suddenly in my tracks when I saw my mother’s pearls in their blue velvet box on top of the dresser. The pearls my grandmother had given to my mother and I’ve had ever since my mother’s passing. I’ve kept them in the back of a drawer in my dresser where I keep seldom used things as I am not really a pearl wearer and haven’t worn them or even thought of wearing them for years. I know for a fact, without a doubt, that I did not take them from that drawer. The only other person living at our home is my husband. After interrogating him for about an hour, to the point of making him angry, I had to begin to believe he was telling the truth. What purpose would he have for opening that drawer? If he did, why would he take and leave out the pearls and not disturb anything else in the drawer? It was a mystery.

Pearls…symbols of female generative power, the oyster the womb of the pearl. Pearls… symbols of purity, beautiful and rare. Pearls… found on the gates of heaven.

Was this my sign? What did it mean? How did it relate to Kirsten? A memory sprung to mind of Kirsten asking for pearls as a gift perhaps a year ago. I told her I wasn’t going to buy them for her, I didn’t see her as a “pearl girl” either and told her that she could borrow mine if she wanted to. I don’t think she ever did. Was that the connection?  Or were they chosen simply so that I would know it was a sign just for me?

Me and Mom

Maybe Kirsten is together with my mother (and possibly grandmother) in heaven…four generations of the maternal bloodline, like part of a chain… or a string of pearls.

 The next morning, as I leaned over the table full of candles on the altar at church, the candlelight from the one in front and center, which I lit in Kirsten’s memory flickered briefly on the strand of pearls hanging from my neck.

That Makes My Butt Go Numb

There are certain things about each person that make them who they are and are the things that are missed the most when they are gone. One of the things I miss the most about Kirsten is the funny way she had with words.

Some of the expressions she used didn’t seem to fit the situation at all and were just silly, like “architecturally diverse,” but others were really quite clever. And it was the fact that the expressions weren’t quite right which made them so endearing and so Kirsten. Anyone can say them right…it takes a different kind of mind to come up with new ones.

Once when she wanted me to get something from her room, she told me it was on the "passenger side" of her bed. I understood immediately that she meant the side of her queen size bed that she didn’t sleep on. A different way of putting it, yes, but it did make sense. If she had a headache, she said it "felt like she had a bowling ball in her head."

And if something was really painful looking, like the Joe Theisman leg injury, the one that broke his leg visibly between the knee and the ankle and gave most people the “heebie jeebies” or the “willies”, she was the only person I know who would say it made her “butt go numb.”  I feel ya, Kirsten.

Another time she felt nauseous, and she asked me if I knew what she meant when she said that “the inside of her mouth had started sweating.” Well, yes… actually, I did. I had just never heard anyone put it that way before and probably never will again. She had a unique way of looking at things which was hers, and hers alone.

                “The pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arises from the feeling that there is in every individual something which is inexpressible, peculiar to him alone, and is, therefore, absolutely and irretrievably lost.”

                                                                           ~Arthur Schopenhauer

                                                                                                     Kirsten 2010
                                                                                                    We miss you <3