Before and After

Your birthday is always hard.  I generally make sure to make no plans, so I can spend a quiet evening at home, thinking of you.  I light a candle, always lime green, because that's always going to be your color now.  All of us who loved you, our lives are divided by before and after.  And on this day, this marks the beginning of before.  I look back over 23 years, and see all the happiness of before.  I see all these people I don't know anymore.  One of them is me.  In the after those people are not the same people as in before.  They look different.  They move differently.  The weight of after crushed the essence of those people who were before.

I always know this will be an emotional day.  But this today, this year in after, I have spent a full 22 hours trying to hold the emotion at bay.  This today, this year, I am angry.  I am furious.  I go over the day that began the after.  I think of how you three died because of the actions of that one.  I am furious, here in after, with the police for not testing for blood alcohol, with the Crown prosecutor for making an agreement with the public defender before the police forensics report was even back.  I am as flabergasted , almost seven years after, that the same prosecutor charged that one not with three charges for your deaths, but with one misdemeanor.  I have spent most of this day in after trying to find sense in those choices of those people.  I remain convinced there was none.

I think I am angry today because there story needs to be told, but I don't know how to tell it yet.   Maya Angelou said "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you."  It is fair to say I am feeling somewhat tortured today in after.  It isn't really my story, but I think one day I'll be called to be its scribe.  "'Stories are important,' the monster said.  'They can be more important than anything if they carry the truth," (Patrick Ness).  Seems fitting.  I sense the story, but the thing is, all the main characters were taken too soon and it now the plot doesn't make any sense.  A lot of things don't make sense here in after.  This story has too many villians, three too many felled heroines, and so many casualties, I can hardly make sense of it, even seven years into after.

But I lay it down, for now.  Your green candle is waning.  Your playlist misses you.  Your Hollywood Undead, and your Billy Talent mix with my songs.  They mix well, like us.  I fight a lump in my throat as I watch the snippets of video from before from your Dad, the pictures I looked at with your mom.  Memory is a funny thing.  I have collected hundreds of them, but they are precious fragments of the bigger piece of art that was you.  A smile, a laugh, a toddler with arms crossed and a frown that couldn't know she was even cuter when trying to be mad.  The warmth of a hug, many many many goofy faces.  A contented sigh.  Even a snore or two.  Twirling in the first dress you ever liked.  Holding you when you still needed it.  And with your pictures, I settle into a quieter place, in a shadow cast from all your light before that spreads across all these years to after.

I can't do anything but smile when I see your face, even if it's only a picture.  That's who you were.  Happy birthday in heaven.  I hope you know how much we love and miss you here after.


"Sometimes the best and worst times of your life can coincide. It is a talent of the soul to discover the joy in pain—-thinking of moments you long for, and knowing you’ll never have them again. The beautiful ghosts of our past haunt us, and yet we still can’t decide if the pain they caused us out weighs the tender moments when they touched our soul. This is the irony of love."  Shannon Alder.