Hugging your memory a little closer tonight

 "Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything." -- C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Another anniversary, another tough day.  While I celebrate the times we had with you, I remain acutely aware of your absence.  And with the loss of you came the loss of so many other things.  I didn't want to become somebody else, but it happened all the same.  C.S. Lewis also said "There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me."  I think I know what he meant when he said that.  We are still here, but we are not the same.  While we move through the world like anyone else, we can never touch it again in quite the same way.  There are joys, and laughter, but they are muted, not just by the sorrrow of your loss, but in the loss of faith in those illusions that good things happen to good people, that there is time, that there is safety.  It's hard to experience the world in the same way when the innocence of those imaginings is gone.  

I remember reading once, be it a myth or an old wives tale, that sometimes events are so tragic, so traumatic, that they create a ripple in whatever fabric separates this life and the next...that the veil between realms is thinned on anniversaries of those events.  It may not fit into any religion that I know, but, I like to think that on days like these, when our hearts are aching and we lay flowers, light candles, and remember you, that you are just a little closer to see the love we lay out for you.  I like to imagine you are a little closer to us on these days.  Sometimes I believe I can feel it.

I hope you are a little closer tonight.  I hope you know I got you colored roses, that I have a vase that seems just made for you, Laramie, and Brooke, and that I still raise up hearts, and love, like you were so good at doing.  I know you know we all miss you, and I hope your memory is dancing in the hearts and minds of all of your friends tonight as well.

I hope you know what a joy you brought into our lives...I think you always knew that, but I don't think you or any of us knew then that they were the best years of our lives.

Tonight I will sit back, and close my eyes, and watch you dancing in your flower girl dress with your bunny at your uncle's wedding.  I will watch you play fighting with your brother in the basement of grandma and grandpa's farm house.  I will watch you tease Uncle Loops.  I will look down at you, nose crinkles and eyes squinted as we spin round and round til dizzy, and hear you say "Spin me again Aunty!"  I will watch you at the playground with Grandma.  I will laugh at you watching TV curled up with Grandpa.  I'll watch you as a young lady hopping in the car with your mom that last trip home when I saw you.  I will watch you with your cousins around the Christmas tree.  I'll watch you carrying Burpee cat everywhere.  I'll watch you drawing, and playing with horses.  And my heart will break again with the bittersweet combination of pain and happiness that it all brings  Because in his wisdom, C.S. Lewis also said grief is all the love you want to give but cannot...grief is just love with no place to go.  

I will think of you with all the friends you left behind, and I will think of you with the friends at your side.  I hope all of our families are comforted by our memories tonight. 

I hope you feel all the love, my  special girl.  We love and miss you so much.

Twenty Nine

She would be twenty nine today. 

February 18, 1993 I became an aunty. We all fell in love with the pretty baby girl with the big brown eyes.  I would have never imagined then that the time we would be so short.  They were such happy times.  

This was the little girl who would sleep late in her lion king jammies (she was a bit nocturnal), walk out with hair awry, sleepy eyes, dragging her stuffed bunny and crawl onto laps for cuddles over coffee.  We all endured the Barney the purple dinosaur years as she watched it with wide eyed delight, the Pokemon phase, the Disney phase (Spirit was her favorite because our girl loved horses).  I remember that she hated dresses as a little girl, until I got us kind of matching ones, then she insisted on living in out most of her two year old life.  She was goofy and loved being outside, being at the playground, and she loved her little brother.  She loved animals.  And she loved people.  I got the be 'the far away aunt' so it was always a treat and fun when I visited.  "Spin me again aunty!"...we'd spin until dizzy, play with cats, tease the family.  I enjoyed having a little mini me.  She was most definitely my sister's girl...pretty, spunky, occasionally dramatic...but she was also most definitely a bit like her Aunty.

Sometimes it's hard to think back on life before she was born.  Something about being that person who didn't yet know she would enter our lives (and worse still that the careless actions of another would tear her away) is tsomehow painful, unfathomable, and intolerable.  To be so naive about life, and the depth of loss that would come...I don't know, I just can't go there for some reason.  The say love changes you.  So does loss.

So on Feb 18th, which can be one of the harder days of the year, I light a green candle.  And I think about all the happiness that came into our lives on this day.  I think about the ways she is still with us all, the little things that happen that just have to be signs.  She would be 29.  She might be being a little neurotic about almost being 30.  I don't get to know if she would be married, or have kids, but I bet she'd be excited to be helping one of her besties plan her wedding that's coming up this year, and I bet her other friends kids would love her and call her the fun aunt if she didn't have a couple of her own.  I hope she would have travelled.  I hope she would have a job she'd loved, but also found a way to do from home or on the road.  I would hope she would have made some epic journey's and stories in this decade...heck, I know she would have.

I like to think that while she didn't get to do these things, that we carry her with us.  When we, her family and beloved friends, see a new city, catch the twilight prairie skies, or pause to marvel at a funny leaf, or help a stray critter, that she is right there with us.  That she sees and lives on with us.

I always loved this photo of her, looking out over the horizon, and know she intended to capture the irony of being behind a barbed wire fence looking out into a vast expanse of beautiful skies and the unknown.  She was artsy in ways we were just beginning to understand.  A deep and old soul I think.

I love that she gave us such great memories to treasure.  Who can forget the bug bowl birthday present, the silly cat names, the wit and sarcasms.  It was so much fun watching her become a person it was so easy to be proud of.  She was a good person.  She made people feel special.  She cared about them.  She had real impacts on them, even if her own time was so short.

Twenty Nine.  Thirteen years of echoes in my head instead of your voice on the phone,  thirteen years of questions and imaginings where there should be new memories.  Sixteen years is such a short time.  It can never be enough.  Yet in another 13 years, it will still be everything to me.  I love you Jaycena, today, always, and forever.