Poetic License

You would think that after all these years it would get a little easier. You would think. You would think that I would no longer fall apart or that there wouldn’t be things that people can say that would destroy me. You might think that by this point, I would be less fragile and more able to shrug off careless statements. But I’m not there yet, and I might never be. My daughter’s birthday was a week ago. She would have been forty. She should have been forty. But she remains twenty-five for all eternity.

For some reason, the milestone birthdays hit parents particularly hard. I’ve heard this same thing from other parents who have lost their children. It is the same with milestone anniversaries, as well. This year, she will have been gone fifteen years. A careless word can bring it all right back to the here and now. That’s the reality of the kind of PTSD one develops when they lose a child.

I can’t get into the particulars here about what happened the day my daughter died, because I’m not strong enough in this moment. In this moment, I’m trying to remember to breathe and keep putting one foot in front of the other. The people who know me best already know. And it’s something I’ve written about in my book-in-progress. Every time I write about it, I’m reliving it. Every time I retell it, I’m right back in it. I cried so hard the night before her birthday that my ribs hurt. I lay in bed on her birthday, trying to nap away the thoughts. But I also remembered the birthdays I had with her.

Her favorite cake was strawberry shortcake. I don’t remember when she developed a taste for it, but we would often make a strawberry shortcake together, especially on her birthday. I have a photograph of her in the kitchen in our house in Mount Airy, getting ready to spread the whipped cream on the cake. She was wearing black pants with suspenders and a black-and-white striped shirt, her hair pulled back into a ponytail with a scrunchie. She was smiling ear to ear. Those are the memories I hold onto.

The day before her birthday, I spoke to her dad. He was already planning to take the next day off work, as was I. Well, I hadn’t originally planned to, but the closer I got to her birthday, the worse I felt. What’s the point in trying to fake it through a day of work, doing things that don’t matter in the great scheme of life. I know they matter to the bottom line – mine and the company’s – but they don’t really matter. Certainly they don’t matter as much as my little girl did. Speaking with Paul, I recalled some of the memories we share. I played music. I shared some with him.The two of us are the only people in the world who remember the moment she came into the world. And we’re the only two who know what it felt like when she left it. We will always have that bond, and all those memories.

The world doesn’t make sense without her in it, but I still have to live. I still have to get up every day and find some meaning in the things I do. I’ve decided that this year, I’m taking charge of my health in a more deliberate way. My disappointment in the doctors and nurse practitioners I’ve seen here is acute. I do have one CRNP who helped me through a difficult chronic problem, but she has been the exception.

So I’ve gone vegetarian again. I did this once before, and my daughter was vegan. I’m working my way toward being vegan, but it’s incredibly difficult to find some of the cheese replacements here in my little burg. I know I’m going to want to make pizza and tacos from time to time. With tacos, I can forgo the cheese, really, but I need it for pizza. You can be a really unhealthy vegetarian/vegan if you don’t focus on whole foods, but I know that I will want a old favorite sometimes.

My next step is to start exercising regularly again. After I moved to NC, all of my normal routines went out the window. I no longer had a 2-mile path mapped out in my neighborhood. I no longer had a reason to get out and see people, because all my friends were in Frederick. I’ve been home a lot. I bought myself a nice digital camera for Christmas, and I plan to (when it is a little warmer) get out and start taking some nature pics.

Although getting through Steph’s birthday was hard, and getting through the upcoming anniversary will be equally as hard, this is the year of looking ahead and trying to regain my health. I’m going to do everything I can to reverse some of the disease processes my body has going. I want to heal myself. If I still have to be here, living without my daughter, then I might as well feel as good as I can. I’m tired of feeling sick and tired. I think my daughter would want me to live. I think so. I hope she knows, wherever she is, that no amount of time with her was enough for me. Someday we’ll be reunited. If the people who don’t believe in an afterlife turn out to be right, and it’s all over when we die, then I’ll be okay with that, too. It will either be the reunion with my child or the end of my long grief. Until then, I honor her by honoring me.

Namaste, Jude