The Unfinished Story

I don’t just miss who Kirsten was, I miss who she was going to be. I miss the rest of her life, the unfinished story. Sometimes I make up the rest of the story myself and it goes like this...

Kirsten would finish college in four years. She would struggle a little, but would graduate from Shippensburg University with a degree in Graphic Design and start working at GKA, the advertising agency that our friend, Jodi, co-owns. She would plan her new and trendy outfit for each day the night before. She would get along great with Jodi and would model herself after her. They had a lot in common: energy, enthusiasm, cheerfulness and a positive outlook. Kirsten would do well there and be successful and well liked. She would also spend time with Jodi’s kids because she missed them from the days when she used to be their after school nanny.

Sam

Emma

 

Kirsten would marry at about 25. She would marry an ordinary, down to earth kind of guy and have two kids, a boy named Colton and a girl named Blaire or Emma, or maybe two boys. I would be there for the deliveries, along with her husband and her best friend. She would quit work or cut her hours to part time to be a good mom. Being a mother would come naturally to her. There are pictures of her on facebook holding friends' babies and she looks so comfortable with them. 

Allyssa

She would be a great wife and mother. She would probably try to be a mom like our old next door neighbor, Diana, Marc's mom.  Kirsten spent a lot of time next door and I think she learned to be so organized and punctual from Diana. Kirsten's children would always be nicely dressed, probably in designer clothes, and be well kept and clean. She would spend lots of time with them, play with them and take them places. Her house would always be neat and clean and the kids would always get to school on time. She and her little family would come over for dinner a couple times a week and her kids would love us. They would love swimming in the pool in the summer and watching football games in the winter. She and I would go out for girls' days, going to the mall and to lunch. We would talk on the phone everyday. She would ask me for recipes or advice on childcare or how to do something she needed help with and she would enthusiastically tell me all about her day. It would be a play-by-play description, not a single detail left out.

Later, when Ken and I got older, Kirsten would insist that we come to live with her so she could take care of us. She would think we were such cute, little old people and would do my hair and make-up for me. When we passed on, she would make sure everything was done right, no matter what the cost. She would make sure that we were dressed nicely and that it was a funeral that would honor us. She would speak at our funerals of her fond memories and of the things she learned from each of us. She would wear my ring everyday and have pictures of us in her house because she missed us.

And, although she missed us, she would live a long and happy life. She would continue to be the Kirsten we all knew and loved…cheerful, funny, helpful, pretty and classy, brightening everyone’s life she touched.

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.”

                                                                            ― John Greenleaf Whittier

  

Many Rooms

The idea that an afterlife might exist, and might possibly be just a part of a grander scheme, different parts of one big world, came up again last week while I was at work. This concept seems to be a recurrent theme for me whenever someone in my family dies and, although I’m not overly religious, I find it to be an interesting idea.  The same two pieces of writing keep popping up, John 14:2 and the poem "Death is Nothing at all," which are very similiar.

Both verses seem to say that there are different states of being, each with its own location, but each parts of a whole. Both verses use the analogy of a house with many rooms. As if being alive or being dead are just different forms of “being,” both under one roof. One could interpret that in a religious way and believe that we are in God’s house no matter which form of being you are in, or if you are more unsure of that, you could interpret it to mean that we are all part of the universe/earth/world no matter what form of being you happen to be in. Either way, it is an interesting concept and, if true, somewhat comforting.

John 14:2...

“In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.”

Explained like this...Whether here or there, we are still in the house, in one of the mansions of our Father, in one of the apartments of his vast abode. This we ought continually to feel, and to rejoice that we are permitted to occupy any part of his dwelling-place.

And the  poem by the Canon Henry Scott-Holland, who became a professor at Oxford University... 

Death Is Nothing At All

Death is nothing at all

I have only slipped away into the next room

I am I and you are you

Whatever we were to each other

That we are still

Call me by my old familiar name

Speak to me in the easy way you always used

Put no difference into your tone

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow

Laugh as we always laughed

At the little jokes we always enjoyed together

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was

Let it be spoken without effort

Without the ghost of a shadow in it

Life means all that it ever meant

It is the same as it ever was

There is absolute unbroken continuity

What is death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind

Because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you for an interval

Somewhere very near

Just around the corner

All is well.

Nothing is past; nothing is lost

One brief moment and all will be as it was before

          How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

The second one is the poem I chose, from dozens of death related poems and verses, to read at the end of Kirsten’s eulogy. Later, my sister, Kristina, reminded me that it was the same poem that our grandmother quoted after our brother, John’s, death in 1979. My sister, who was 13 at that time, in her grief wrote, “my brother is gone” on a piece of paper in her room. Our Grandma Dan, who was in from out of town for the funeral and was sharing Kristina’s room, secretly added to the note, “your brother is not gone, he has only slipped into the next room.” Maybe it is such a common verse in times of loss that it is not that much of a coincidence, but at any rate, I had not thought of that when I chose my reading, nor had I thought, until then, of the verse that was bookmarked in a bible on the nightstand of my mother’s deathbed at home in 1994, and what the two verses had in common. I had never seen my mother in a church, except for weddings, nor had I ever seen her with a bible, so we were mystified when we found it there. The bible was bookmarked at John 14:2, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms…”

So, anyway, fast forward to Wednesday last week. I was seeing a patient that I have been treating for about ten years. As I worked he told me that he was going to begin to work with hospice care in Frederick County. I told him that I admired that and told him that I have had a good experience with the hospice bereavement services and explained the situation to him. He told me he had an advantage over the other hospice care workers because he could communicate with the other side, that he “sees dead people.” He had never mentioned this before, and although I was thinking he was possibly “off his rocker” at this point, I stopped what I was doing (just in case) and told him to concentrate and try to focus on Kirsten. He closed his eyes and was quiet for a moment and then he said, “She is always watching over you, but I don’t feel her right here right now…you know, in our father’s house there are many rooms…”

Wait for me Kiki <3

The Dream

I had my first real dream about Kirsten on May 8^th, the night before Mother’s Day, a Mother’s Day gift. I say “real dream” because it was the first one in which she spoke to me and wasn’t just seen from a distance.  From ancient times, people have believed that dreams are meaningful. In the Bible, messages from God were often revealed in dreams, and well-known psychologists, Freud and Jung, among others, believed that dreams are a hidden window into the subconscious. I'm not sure which I believe, but I do find them interesting.

Kirsten, Kenny and I were at a public pool, in the evening, for some kind of social gathering. I was sitting on a pool chair near the pool eating something when Kirsten called out to me from my right, further down the poolside. She said, “Mom, come over here when you get done with that.” I didn’t finish what I was eating, but got up immediately and went to her. We both had white towels wrapped around us from our armpits to our knees. I fell into step a couple of steps behind her, following her towards a six foot wide part of the pool which jutted out from the main pool, on our left, across the pool deck in front of us at a right angle to the rest of the pool. She walked down the sloped entrance into the water and I followed, the water gradually becoming deeper, deeper than I had anticipated. The water came up to my armpits and I was a bit concerned when the towel I was wearing rose up around me.  I was vaguely aware of another presence, a male figure of some authority such as a guard or police officer, watching us from about 50 feet to our right whom I couldn’t quite see because it was dark. As soon as we got to the deepest part, we started up the other side, coming out together, walking side-by-side, Kirsten on my left. Kirsten asked for help with a dilemma saying,  “Dad wants me to take off the ring Jessica gave me and he wants me to start wearing the ring that he/you guys gave me. He says I’ve got a really pretty ring there and I should be wearing it.” Just as I started to tell Kirsten to follow her heart and do whatever she wanted about the ring, I woke up.

The first thing that struck me about this dream was that I was behind her until we got to the other side of the water and then I was next to her. It felt like some sort of metamorphosis and it felt sort of religious. We were walking through water, wading through it with some difficulty, and came out on the other side together. When I awoke it seemed as if there was some kind of meaning to this, as if it were a message. So I did what I usually do, I looked it up.

I found that wading through water is sometimes thought to represent hardship. Water is also a symbol for life itself and the word of God. Water is used symbolically in baptism, a purification rite, as spiritual cleansing and entry into Christianity. In ancient times, there were walk-in pools of holy water outside the temples that priests were required to immerse in before entering. And what about this authoritarian male presence watching us from afar? Is my subconscious actually bringing God into my dreams? I’m not even very religious.

Next, I thought about the ring. I remembered that rings are used in marriage ceremonies for a reason, that a ring symbolizes eternity because it is a never-ending circle and it also symbolizes unity. In the dream, Kirsten couldn’t decide which ring to wear. Was it symbolic of her breaking the bond with family, moving on, and asking my blessing?

And finally, I thought about how in the dream, as in life, Kirsten came to me with a dilemma to ask for my advice. In the dream I was just about to tell her it was okay to follow her own heart, but didn't get a chance to. 
Are dreams merely the subconscious at work while we sleep, or are they actually spiritual messages? What do you think? Whichever one it is, I hope to be reunited with Kirsten again soon in my dreams.

~A dream which is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read.  ~The Talmud

~That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it.... We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself.  ~Paracelsus, quoted in The Dream Game

Angels

I have given it a lot of thought, and as much as I want to, I don’t believe in angels. Well, to clarify, I don’t believe that people become angels when they die. Since March, I have been told many times that God needed another angel or that Kirsten is now a beautiful angel looking over us. I know people say those things to be comforting, and it almost works, but I couldn’t help thinking it through further. I began to wonder if my mother and brother were angels, and if so, who are they looking out for if not me? And my grandparents…on both sides. And their grandparents, and so on and so forth. I started wondering if there were more “angels” than people on earth so I looked it up. Based on estimated population rates since the known appearance of humans on earth, 100,000,000,000 people have died. That’s 100 billion. Given my personal belief in the inherent good of man (thanks to my Dad), I believe a small percentage of those might have gone to “hell,”(if there is such a thing) leaving about 900 billion people who would have become angels. There are currently 6 billion people on earth so that’s 150 angels per person...and this is the best they can do?! Whose side are they on, anyway?! Read any newspaper and you will see that there is a lot of suffering in the world.  And what could be worse than the pain I am enduring now? No, I don’t believe in those angels.

What I do believe in is the possibility that there are angels on earth. That they are in the form of ordinary people... people you know, unappointed servants, unaware that they are quietly carrying out God’s work. They are the people who step up to the plate in times of crisis, like the people who cared for me when I didn’t during that first month. They did laundry, managed visitors and made me eat when I would have let myself starve. They helped with the horrifying details of the funeral and they made me brush my teeth. They were the people who brought meals to us every day of that first month.

I believe that these hidden angels are also the people who take time out of their busy lives to do something to lighten the burden of others. They are the people who send me heartfelt text messages or emails, some of which come at just the right moment, and they are the people who have spent countless hours with me, keeping me company either at home or at coffee shops, allowing themselves, willingly, to be immersed in such anguish and sorrow.

They are the people who have given us thoughtful gifts which help us keep Kirsten’s memory alive…the engraved granite bench next to the pool, the pink cherry blossom tree in the backyard, the beautiful David Yurman charm bracelet with its heart and letter "K" charms on it and the necklace and pendant which was imprinted with Kirsten’s fingerprint at the funeral home, just to name a few.

And they are the people who have faith in me, more faith than I have in myself, who believe that someday I will come back to them.

"I will not wish thee riches, nor the glow of greatness, but that wherever thou go some weary heart shall gladden at thy smile, or shadowed life know sunshine for a while. And so thy path shall be a track of light, like angels' footsteps passing through the night."
   
                       - Words on a Church Wall in Upwaltham England

Christmas Comes Anyway

Something that never seems fair to me is that no matter how important a person is, when they die, the world just keeps going on without them. The sun continues to rise, the seasons continue to change and people keep celebrating holidays, all despite the fact that this most important, loved person is gone.

There was no way of stopping Christmas. It came whether we wanted it to or not. It came with all of its glad tidings, jolly carols and happy people wishing us a “Merry” Christmas. We tried to escape it with plane tickets. We thought about ignoring it until it was over, but, in the end, we surrendered and had Christmas, or at least we went through the motions of it, even though it felt wrong to do so.

We put off getting a tree and having to face the box of ornaments, so many of them made over the years by little hands, as long as we could. Having enlisted family and friends to help decorate the tree, we made it past that hurdle. Decorating the mantel and hanging the stockings was next. More decisions. Which would be worse, to hang all of the stockings (one of which would be glaringly empty on Christmas morning), three of the stockings (leaving one obviously empty hook), or none of them?

We decided to hang all of them and then decided to invite all of Kirsten’s friends over one evening to fill her stocking with their favorite memories of her. As friends arrived, I walked with them to her stocking and let them put their contribution in it themselves. Some of them were visibly moved as they tucked small pieces of paper folded up many times or beautifully decorated cards into Kirsten’s stocking, each entry a personal memory, each one a piece of history, a piece of Kirsten.

It was nice to be around Kirsten’s friends again. It gave us a glimpse into what would have been her world and it livened up the house with the chatter of young people. I hope that it helped them, too. I hope that it gave them a reason to come over and be closer to Kirsten’s memory, a reason they may have been looking for. Some of them asked to spend some time in her room. Before they left, I gave each of them a simple, sparkly, white angel ornament with her initials and her trademark <3 written on it to take home and I also hung one on our tree. I like thinking that every Christmas we will all have matching ornaments that will remind us of Kirsten and of that special time of our lives when she was here.

Last Christmas

On Christmas morning Michelle came down the stairs, oddly alone, to open gifts. I usually take a picture of the girls as they round the corner to catch their first glimpse of the tree, but Michelle quickly shot that idea down. Every picture taken since March has made us sad. We notice what is missing more than what is in the picture. 

The three of us sat on the floor around the tree and alternated opening gifts, trying to mask the fact that Michelle was suddenly opening gifts alone. We saved Kirsten’s stocking for last, wanting to have something to look forward to. We read each memory, one by one, smiling and sometimes crying as we did. It made us feel as if we were, in some way, including Kirsten in our Christmas morning. We could almost feel her presence in the words of her friends…words of love, friendship and joy.

It’s the most surreal feeling…knowing in your head that the world can’t stop because of one person but feeling that is disrespectful of it not to.