Show and Tell - The Art of the Quickie

Um...no - don't go there. This is a parenting after loss blog after all!

But my DSL connection is reallllllly slow tonight and so, here goes a quickie S and T of the GIRL's weekend...(updated to say that my connection died last night so a morning post it is!)

Bear's Bag

Comedian's bag

Two really excited girls to go to two really fun sleepovers for the weekend!!! Yeah - no mommy and daddy for 48 whole hours!! (seriously - they didn't even say a real goodbye to us, just ran an played with their friends!)
They made bears at their Nana and Papa's house. Must.Show.Off

Bear named hers "EmmaBear" - my heart melted.

Comedian passed out. The aftereffects of a really FUN weekend!

So, that's that for my driveby show and tell...what is everyone else showing?

Packing A Picnic Basket

"Momma, you seem a little bit sad and a little bit happy today. You were really happy on your birthday...

I know! Let's have a picnic -- at Emma's grave. Yeah! We'll pack sanwiches, carrots, raisins, and cake! She really wants us to have a picnic at she's grave today. Will that make you happy Momma?"

It makes me sad that she can read me so well. But it makes me so very happy that she views Emma's grave as a place of solace, a place where 'Momma can get happy again'.

The rain just plain makes me mad. No picnic today....

Show and Tell - Fulfilling a Promise

Many months ago, I wrote of a girl with streaming tears, heartbroken because "Emma lost all her leaves" (and if blogger was working tonight...I'd have the link - perhaps tomorrow)

Yesterday, she appeared in the doorway beaming a smile that could literally have reached ear to perfect little ear.

"Wow! You look happy!" I said.

"Ye-ya-yah" she said in that adorable I-add-a-third-syllable-to-every-word kind of four year old way. "Emma's leaves are back!!! They're baaaack!!!* You said when Emma's leaves comed back we could take a picture!! Get your camera!! Get it!! Now!!"

So I did.

And it felt so good to be fulfilling that promise made on a chilly fall day when tears fell in unison with her leaves.

Today - all sun - all smiles...and*for clarification, they did not come back overnight like a sister-angel miracle, but I waited for Ms. Comedian to notice for herself -and it was well worth it!

Perfect Moment Monday - Cameras and Connectedness

Perfect moments happen everyday, Lori totally gets that… and this week I got a double dose. I found myself in a blissfully perfect emotive moment within another, more commercially perfect moment.

I captured our perfect images with this

- a borrowed camera still in my possession after the memory walk. And – Oh.My.Good.God I fell madly in love with it.

Yes, that’s right, I have very strong feelings for this picture-clicker what with its easy adjustable zooming lens, clear quality, and (my heart actually skipped a beat) its lightning fast sequence capture ability.

It is hard to believe a die-hard scrapbooker like me has NOT ever touched such a magical item. *sigh* It will exist in my dreams for a spell more, as financially the perfectness that is that camera is not doable – yet.

And here, are the perfect moments it captured.

After the walk, we went to Emma’s grave. Comedian insisted on it and I, the doting mother, was more than happy to oblige seeing as I was planning on it anyway. The fact that it was her idea touched me more than I can say.

I brought Emma a protected copy of the walk program with an awareness pin we gave out at the one mile mark.

Bear, who is still refusing to be pictured (please – just a short phase I pray) brought her one of the Share Southern Vermont balloons.

It flew to heaven before we could get it secured. “I guess Emma really wanted to hold the balloon” was her response.

And Comedian?

She brought her sister a schmorgasborg of items that “Emma did want to have for long and longer times because 'you know mom' they DO projects in heaven!”

Then – being the flexible little bundle that she is, picked them all back up so they wouldn’t get “rained and thundered on”.

*Big Contented Sigh* - My three girls, all together, without tears or questions. We were just there. It was perfect.

Freuidan Slip

I say all the time how Emma is part of this household. There is no place in this home that she isn't, for me - anyway.

The girls absorb this, without question -but speak of it rarely. They mostly speak of Emma's death, the reality of her absence. But I have learned that just because something isn't spoken has no bearing on it's ability to delve deep inside you and live there, popping out at the most unexpected time.

This morning we had a perfect playdate - of which my definition is both parents and kids get along really well. I'm sure you know the other kind of playdate, where you really want to hang out with the mom, but for some reason known only to the compatibility gods your kids just do not click and you spend more time negotiating conflict than enjoying each other's company!

Anyway- this match works - on all levels - and it found us in The Comedian's bedroom with three girls hudled around a candyland board. There was the expected chatter about colors and spaces, and reminders of whose turn it was, and then - Bear spoke to our guest, looked directly in her eyes as she said:

"Emma - it's your turn."

My breath hitched, then I caught the other mother's eye for a shared smile. But the girls - went on, unphased, potentially unaware of the monniker slip and the moment of sheer joy it brought to my heart.

I closed my eyes to the blond hair of this child, for surely I would never have produced a child so fair - and enjoyed the vision of three girls, varied heights, playing a board game. The simplicity of this basic act both embraced and enraged my heart. How could small moments like this been stolen from us? How blessed I am to be able to see - and enjoy them - as they become possible, if only for a moment.

Clearly, there will be more questions coming soon, from both Bear and I.

I hope I'm ready.

I hope you're ready.

Why?

"Why do babies die?"


I have asked myself that question a thousand - hundred - a million times. Well, if I'm being honest, in the beginning it was, "Why did my baby die?" Only recently have I been able to open my broken heart to the world and broaden the query to a woe-is-us level.

"Why do babies die?"


But this post isn't about me. It is about Bear. For this was the question she asked on the way home from a dentist appointment yesterday.


Our conversation was so surreal. The words fell from my mouth without outward emotion. Keep it simple. Keep it short. Be honest. Be age-appropriate. The sun shining pleasantly through the window seemed misplaced, as though speaking candidly and honestly about her dead sister required weather more timid, maybe stormy. Inside I was grieving the moment, the conversation for its enevitibility.

I planned for this day. I knew it would come. How could it not? Children grow and within them, their minds evolve, creating connections, asking questions. Yes, I knew there would come a day when her curiosity about the pie-in-the-sky notion I had attested to all these years of a sister she'd never met living in heaven would clash with her cognitive ability to comprehend.

I had scripts ready; non-cliche responses in my arsenol so I may be honest in an age-appropriate way while letting her lead.


It all when out the window. When push came to shove, read: she fired direct, hard to answer questions, I did the best I could -taking long pauses to make sure every word counted. It went something like this:


Bear: Why do babies die?


Me: Honestly Sweets - I don't know.


Bear: But Emma died. Why did Emma die?


Me: Something happened inside my body and it made her body not work.


Bear: But I can't see her. Why can't I see her? I saw her one time in my bed, remember? So why can't I see her again?


Me: Yes. I remember. You might or you might just feel her from now on. That's what I do. I feel her.


Bear: You held her?


Me: Yes


Bear: But that doesn't make any sense. You said she died inside you. How did she come out of you then go back in?


Me: She didn't Bear. Emma died inside me. Then - I pushed her out. Then - I held her. She was still dead. Her body still didn't work.


Bear: (accepting this) Well, where did you put her? Did you leave her there?


Me: No Sweets. We buried her, in the earth -under the stone that we go visit all the time.


Bear: (becoming agitated) -Mom, you aren't making any sense! How could you put her in the earth when there was a stone in the way??


Me: (making the obvious clarifiying statement...then met with silence for a minute I continued) I can tell you are thinking alot about Emma today. Is there anything else you really want to know about Emma right now?


Bear: Mom, remember when I painted my nails using colors in a pattern: pink, purple, pink, purple?



And that was that. She was off to another topic that held her fasicnation equally, if not requiring the same mental energy.


It begins. She is putting pieces together. She wants answers. I don't have them.


My questioning circle is large, nearly oval after all these years of going round and round always returning to the question of orgin: why?


Hers is tiny: just beginning, but expanding ever so slightly each time she grapples with the abstract notion of an 'older' sister that looks very much like a baby - forever.


Today our circles connected, and overlapped - like a venn diagram of grief inqusistion. We have a long way to go. There are many more conversations to be had, with deeper, harder-to-answer-questions.


Someday - far from now, our circles will eclipse. She will be grown up. She will want the whole story - bar-none.


Someday I will tell her...someday.

Show and Tell - An Extentsion of Handmade Love

If you are going through these Show and Tells in order - then you would have recently read Show and Tell - Handmade Love at my grief/loss blog.

This is the extention S&T: the quilts of celebration that followed as Emma's little sisters came along two years later, then two more. As I've said before, with all my writings in varied locations I know you know my kids real names so I am fine with showing you these quilts. But, using Bear and The Comedian has become something of a habit - one that makes me smile, so I will continue doing so.

First Bear's quilt -

Do you see the bunnies? Sisters connected in every fabric of their lives!

And The Comedian's:

So delicate, so classic with tiny embroidered roses.

*sigh* - I love knowing that they will have these for the rest of their lives...and when they leave me my mother might possible make me a compliation quilt so all three girls can come together, as they should be, in our home.

Click HERE for the rest of the class.

Desensitization

My kids are desensatized to death.

I know this. They will soften to the idea once they reach the crucial years of reasoning and the ability to grasp abstract thinking. I mean, 'heaven' isn't such an easy place to rationalize.

They shrugged their shoulders when Tigger ran away. (presumed dead)

They had a few questions, then an "ok - that's too bad" when Ginger dissapeared forever.

And why would they think to cry and despair about a dead cat, requesting a burial in the backyard and to put special toys in the box? They speak with equal candor about Emma. THIS POST the most recent example of how The Comedian minces no words - or concepts.

Our remaining cat, sweet Sally, is pregnant. We have no idea when she's going to deliver the babies. (any of you know the gestation period for a cat??)

So... we sit around the dining room table and vote on the size of the litter. I say 4, hubby 6, the kids agree on 5. Then the question that struck me silent, "Mom, will all the kittens be alive or will some die?"

"Uh............................................" was the best I could manage for a good 30 seconds. Then I decided on the truth. It was something like this, "I hope they will all be alive, but I have known of kittens that died."

Their response? (In a very business-like tone) "Well, if they do die at least they will have Emma to play with them."

A smile was the best I could manage. My kids are ten times wiser then I ever will be.

The Butterfly and The Rock-Stones

No - No, this isn't a catchy new title for, yet another blog. But, it wouldn't make a bad monniker for a classic rock band, would it?

No. It really is a simple case of this girl,

Reading this book,

And saying, "But we love Emma - but she died - but she died to the rocks and the bush and the stones."

This parenting after loss thing is complicated. But for now, Ms. Comedian - yes - Our Emma lives in the rocks, and the stones, and the bush. And - of course - in our hearts.

Angelic Connections

My Bear has always had a connection to the "other" world.

She was a late talker - very late. Her first real word, clear and understandable came from the backseat of the car one Spring afternoon. "Emm-ma" she said, in an uncharacteristically calm voice. She gazed out the window and said it over and over, "Emm-ma - Emma".

This summer she had a moment, where I swear she wasn't herself. It is a very personal story and I would need permission from another mother to tell it. But, succintly put, she can feel spirits - I just know it.

And then, there was the first day of Kindergarten and the red leaf.

She always delivers her world crashing statments with such a cool, poised, matter-of-fact voice. It takes me off guard every time. To be clear - I have always believed that children can see and feel angels and spirits. And so, I have no doubt that she can see and feel Emma. It disarms me because of my internal reaction, and - if I'm being honest - my desire to possess her abilities.

My most recent article in Exhale , Breaking Roadblocks, makes perfectly clear that world-connecting is not in my skill set, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to see her - my sweet girl - just one more time.

Tonight, as I was finishing a chapter in India - The Moonstone Fairy, Bear stopped me with that calm - steady voice she so very rarely uses.

"Mom, I saw Emma last night" she said. I froze, a fairy induced smile still on my face, determined not to let her see what these words do to me.

"Oh?" was my open-ended reply. Whatever she says will be enough. I will not ask leading questions. I will not beg for information.

"Yes. I saw her right here in my blankets. She was here and over there was her crib."

I will not ask...I will not do it...oh - but I want to know.

"She smiled at me mom. I patted her belly and she smiled. I saw her in my blankets."

And then - the flick switched, as it always does - "Hey, how does the chapter end, mom? Come on - read."

My heart is bursting tonight with sadness, love and wonder. My gut is satisfied that we made every right decision when sharing Emma with her sisters.