Friday, December 23, 2011

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



Sunday, December 11, 2011

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 14th 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

Friday, December 2, 2011

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