Hey everyone. It seems I have said all I can say for now. Until I write again, I would recommend the blog "backofthenorthwind.com." My friend, Terri, expresses the grief of the loss of a child so well it's like she's reading my mind...writing my exact feelings.

The Elephant in the Room

Kenny and I were out to dinner a while back and we ran into a couple that we haven’t seen since we moved from our old neighborhood 7 years ago. They stopped at our table and sat down. We have mutual friends in the old neighborhood, so I knew that they must know what had happened. I sat waiting nervously for 15 minutes for one of them to acknowledge it. With a pit in my stomach, I listened to small talk about their kids, the old neighborhood, the weather, until I finally had to work up the courage to ask them directly if they had heard about Kirsten. “Oh, yes” they said, and returned to idle chatter.

This happens quite often. I am not angry or bitter, I just wish people were better informed. To not bring it up the first time you see someone, no matter how long it has been, is to downplay the significance of what has happened. This is THE most significant thing that has ever happened in our lives, and always will be, so to pretend like it isn’t is hurtful and feels disrespectful… not only to us, but to Kirsten.  I would suggest that one muster up the courage to bring it up immediately, to take the burden off the already burdened to be the ones to bring it up, even if the loss happened 20 years ago... and then, after at least a few sentences or questions about it, if you never want to bring it up again…fine.

I was given this poem in a support group…

                  The Elephant in the Room

                                  By Terry Kettering

There’s an elephant in the room.

It is large and squatting, so it is hard to get around it.

Yet we squeeze by with, “How are you?” and “I’m fine”…

and a thousand other forms of trivial chatter.

We talk about the weather. We talk about work.

We talk about everything else --- except the elephant in the room.

We all know it is there.

We are thinking about the elephant as we talk.

It is constantly on our minds,

for you see, it is a very big elephant.

But we do not talk about the elephant in the room.

Oh, please, say her name.

Oh, please, say “Barbara” again.

Oh, please, let’s talk about the elephant in the room.

For if we talk about her death,

perhaps we can talk about her life.

Can I say “Barbara” and not have you look away?

For if I cannot, your are leaving me

alone…in a room…with an elephant.

The Year of Firsts

The year of “firsts” is now over. The big “firsts”… first birthday, first Christmas, first summer without her, and some of the unexpected firsts, the ones that just keep coming, the ones that wear your soul down… the first time I didn’t set her place at the table for a family dinner, the first time I ventured out in public as the woman who had lost a child and the first time I answered “one” when asked how many children I have.

One of the big “firsts” is about to become a second. Next month we will celebrate Kirsten’s birthday without her for the second time. Last year we celebrated her birthday just over a month after her passing. It was as nice a party as it could be without her actually being there.

All of our family and friends were there, and all of Kirsten’s friends, even a couple of the Shippensburg friends. I baked a chocolate cake with chocolate icing and put a number 1 candle and a number 9 candle on it. I wanted to make the cake myself, it was a motherly duty I could still do for her. There were beautiful flower arrangements, so kindly sent to us for the occasion and Kirsten’s friends decorated the house with pink and blue streamers.


The food was from one of Kirsten’s  favorite places, Royal Bakery. There were two 5 foot subs and assorted pastries. When I picked up the food, I took a picture of the heart and initials that Kirsten had drawn on the wall behind one of the booths. Others had added notes to it since the accident. The new management has since painted over it.

After we ate, all of the people who had gotten a tattoo in Kirsten’s honor gathered outside for a picture. There were 12 of us. There are several other people with Kirsten tattoos that aren’t in the picture. When I’m afraid that her friends will one day forget her, I think of those tattoos.

We sang Happy Birthday and blew out the candles. That was when I lost it. I hid my face against Kenny’s shoulder and sobbed. Everything about this was just SO WRONG.

Then we went out back and released about 50 pink balloons with handwritten messages on them. They floated up toward a bright blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds. Mine said, “Happy Birthday, Kiki. I love you, Mom :-) 


It was a perfect spring day and the sight of all those balloons drifting away from the people who had been holding them was very moving. As the balloons passed the treetops, escaping our grasps forever, I noticed Kirsten’s friend, Cami, start to cry.

A Morning Like No Other

One year today...it hardly seems possible.


It was a morning unlike any other, peculiar from the start, with unexpected snowfall covering the ground following a warm, early spring day. I noticed the note while I was still confused about the snow; a yellow sticky note stuck to the kitchen counter that read,

“ Mom/Dad, going over to Amy’s house. She lives off Hawkins Creamery Road. Just wanted to let you know. Love, Kikibird”

This came as a surprise, too, as Kirsten was in pajamas when Kenny and I went to bed around 11pm and I didn’t know she had gone out.  After getting my coffee, I went back upstairs to finish getting ready for work. I dried my hair and did my make-up, glancing occasionally at the news on the TV reflected from the bedroom onto the bathroom mirror. I had my black scrub bottoms on and a white tank top; the black floral scrub top needed a little ironing so I took it to the laundry room to iron it.

The doorbell rang around seven fifteen. My heart stopped when I saw the tan and black of two police officer’s uniforms, a man’s and a solemn looking woman’s, through the glass on each side of the front door. As I came down the steps, scrub top and the towel I was using as an ironing board still in hand, my mind raced into overdrive, panic stricken…”don’t open the door!” “God, please let her be in the hospital!”  I knew from experience what police officers on your doorstep meant. I was seventeen when I opened the door to police officers at three in the morning on another early March morning long ago to be informed that my twenty-two year old brother, John, had fallen to his death from the top of the trunk of a car driven by friends down Wisconsin Avenue after an evening in Georgetown.

And I knew it was Kirsten. I knew Michelle was in bed and Kenny was at work and I had just read the note on the kitchen counter. My worst fears were realized when the policeman said that they were investigating an accident at Rt. 27 near Brink Road and asked me if I owned a red Honda Civic… if I had a daughter named Kirsten who went to Shippensburg University. The officer explained that there was black ice, she had lost control of the car, gone into the other lane and had been hit by a Ford Explorer coming from the other direction at five o’clock that morning. And then the worst words I have ever heard, the ones I am constantly chasing from my mind, the words that pop into my head at random times of the day, when I look at pictures and when I lay in bed at night…”she was pronounced dead at the scene.” My reaction brought Michelle downstairs and the officer encouraged me to sit down. Together we sat, stunned, in the living room.

My mind went back to the images in the bathroom mirror and sorted through them until it found them…I had seen it without knowing it…the red car in the darkness, lit up by a news helicopter’s spotlight…the banner at the bottom of the screen reading, “Fatal accident in Germantown.”

The male officer gave me his business card and explained to me that I would need to contact a funeral home, the words “funeral home” making me feel sick to my stomach. They prepared to leave, but I wouldn’t let them give me news like that and just walk away. I led them into the kitchen and, through my tears, pointed at Kirsten’s big, beautiful senior picture over the mantel. I think I wanted to inflict a little of my pain on them. I wanted them to be able to put a face to the name. To make them see what a loss it was, not only to us, but also to the world.

I went back upstairs, Michelle trailing behind me, crawled back in bed, and that was how my life, as I knew it, ended.

I WAS ONCE YOU

With the one year mark coming up I thought I would share this letter written by Colleen Fledderman, who lost her 18 year old daughter in 2001. I identified so closely with her letter that I felt like if I changed the names I could have written it myself.... so that's what I did. I think I speak for any mother who has lost a child when I say that her letter illustrates the depth of the loss so well.
                                             ~~~

I have never met Carlie Brucia’s mother, Nicole Brown Simpson’s mother, Polly Klass’s mother, Princess Dianna’s mother, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s mother or Laci Peterson’s mother. But I know them all intimately. I know what dwells in their hearts and souls everyday. Like them I buried my daughter.

What am I now? Am I a daughterless mother? That sounds like an oxymoron, two words that contradict themselves. My eighteen year old daughter, Kirsten, died on March 7th, 2011. My life is forever changed. Burying a daughter is a surreal experience. There are no words in Webster’s Dictionary that can explain the grief, the heartache, the pain, the depression or the anguish. Heartbroken is too small a word. The words don’t exist because it is not supposed to happen. There are no plausible definitions that could accurately describe “bereaved parent.” Groups of words can’t be strung together on a typed page to accurately explain the grief. It is impossible to bury your child, yet it happened.

Logically, the factual part of my brain processed the information. The emotional part of my brain argues with the fact everyday. Each and every morning it is still a shock to my entire being! I still peek into her bedroom and expect to find her perfectly made bed a mess of jumbled covers with my daughter snuggled deep inside of them. Parents don’t bury children! Headstones read “loving mother,” “cherished wife.” They don’t read “beloved daughter.” That is not the natural order of the universe. This was not supposed to happen to me. It always happens to other people. I see reports on the evening news, articles in the newspaper describing horrible events that resulted in the death of someone’s child. It isn’t supposed to be my child. How can this be? It can’t be changed. I can’t say, “Kirsten, want to go to the mall?” “Let’s go out to lunch.” She can’t tell me about her “freaking psych test” that she has to study for all night long.

Things I want to say to her are forever left unspoken. How will I go on? I can’t go on, yet I do. My body wakes up each day. I don’t ask for this to happen, it just does. My lungs take in air, it is automatic, something that I have no control over. My physical body now controls the course of events in my life. I breath, I eat, I walk, I talk, I put one foot in front of the other. I load the washer and shop for food. I can work. I can teach. I can think on the job about the job. My spiritual being merely exists. It cannot flourish or soar ever again.

When my daughter died, my emotional self was buried with her. When she died, I also buried her future husband to be, my future grandchildren, my daughter’s future wedding, my daughter’s college graduation ceremony, my holiday, my joy. I buried my best friend. I buried the once perfect life that I knew and lived everyday. Tucked into the corner of Kirsten’s casket is my happy husband. My despondent bereaved husband now

lives with me. I buried my twenty three year old daughter’s future matron of honor. I buried Michelle’s future nieces and nephews. There is not enough room in Kirsten’s casket for all the things that died with her. Dreams, hopes, joys, lives, emotions, hearts and souls slipped into that casket with Kirsten. They occupy every square inch of that place. One day my fifteen year old nephew will be older than her. Can my brain every understand that?

Bereaved parents go on. We go on because we have no other road to travel. It is just we are not “normal” anymore. We used to be you. We used to be the PTA moms and the Girl Scout leaders. We brought lovely frilly fancy holiday dresses for our daughters. We were once carpool moms and soccer moms. We sat at musical recitals and listened to the first melodious squeaks and squawks of their instruments. Forgotten homework assignments were rushed to school for our children. In our heads we planned our beautiful daughter’s future wedding. Vision of the bridal gown and the reception danced in our heads. We couldn’t wait to have grandchildren and baby-sit and enjoy. We wanted to tell our daughters that their children were just like them. Our daughter’s christening gown is carefully preserved and awaiting to be worn by her own children. We wanted to hold our grandchildren’s chubby little fingers in our hands and remember holding our daughters chubby little fingers in our hand.

We used to answer the telephone and hear, “Hey mom, what’s up?” Now the phone doesn’t ring. And it will never ring again with that sweet voice we so desperately would love to hear. Now we are set apart. We are not normal anymore. People choose to walk down a different aisle to ignore us. It is too painful for them to think about our lives. They might take a moment to wonder how we go on. They say, “I can only imagine your pain.” That is not true. No one can imagine it unless they live it. We now belong to a new group. We never wanted to be a part of this group, bereaved parents. No one lines up for this membership. We wish our membership would never grow. I am glad you are not me.

Last Words

A friend of mine said she wished she had known that the last time she saw her son was the last time she’d ever see him. She couldn't remember exactly when it was. It got me thinking about what I would have said to Kirsten if I had known it was the last time I'd ever see her. How would I have spent my time with her?  I am so thankful that I spent most of Kirsten's last day with her and I got to say some of what I would have wanted to, had I known it would be my last chance.






We started out at Chipotle in Germantown, one of Kirsten’s favorite restaurants and now one of mine, too. She had a chicken burrito, which she hardly ate half of. 
We sat in a secluded part of the restaurant, at a counter facing the window with reggae music playing in the background. For some reason, I was compelled to tell her about the day she was born. I told her how she had been special from the very moment she was born. She didn’t look like the other babies, she wasn’t red and skinny and wrinkly. I remembered the moment they handed her to me and being surprised that she had such a healthy, normal skin tone and that it looked like she was a few days old already. She was perfect.

I told her that she continued that way, always so pretty... that I could still picture her at about age four as clearly as if it were yesterday, with those long, pretty, blond wisps of hair that always escaped her ponytail and fell around her face. 

She told me how she had started sharing my love of reggae and that she really wanted to go to my favorite resort in Jamaica. I thought someday we would go. As she walked to the soda fountain to refill her drink, I admired how good she looked in her black yoga pants.


Next we went to Solar Planet, where she used to work, so she could tan. She used the points package and lotion I had gotten her as a surprise for her to use on spring break. I waited while she tanned, then we went next door to Hallmark to buy Michelle’s birthday card. Kirsten took a little detour through the Vera Bradley section and really wanted to get something. She looked at purses and luggage, which were more than I wanted to spend, and finally settled on a small black and red wristlet, which I bought for her. The police returned it the next day with her personal effects. 


Then we went to Best Buy and bought three episodes of How I Met Your Mother for Michelle. That evening, the four of us celebrated Michelle’s birthday with dinner at Mi Rancho. It turned out to be Kirsten’s last meal. Kirsten and I sat across from each other in the booth. We ordered the same thing, steak fajitas. We had a lot of the same tastes...in food, clothing and music. We came home, Michelle opened her gifts and we watched a couple episodes of How I Met Your Mother together before Kenny and I went to bed. I kissed and said goodnight to Michelle and then I kissed Kirsten on her head and said the last words I would ever say to her…”Love you, goodnight.”


Sometimes I try to think of the small blessings that can be found even in the midst of this horrible tragedy. I feel so thankful that on Kirsten’s last day, I got to tell her how special she had always been to me, I got to buy her a gift, eat her last meal with her, kiss her and tell her I loved her.  I guess there are worse ways to leave it.

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.