Mournful Reminiscences

Today I am 36 years and 13 days old. My birthday was back in December, like it is every year. Four days after Christmas. Two days before the turn of the New Year. The day of my birth has always seemed to be lacking in celebration, overshadowed by these other holidays. It's the sole reason why I try to make my girls' birthdays something memorable and special, and probably why I don't like Christmas too terribly much. I didn't much at all until my girls were born.

We celebrate my birthday quietly. I don't like parties, personally. Either I've grown accustomed to the quiet of "oh by the way happy birthday" or I actually do like it this way. It was a normal day like any other. The weekend before, my husband took me to see the new Star Wars film. I'm not as big a nerd for that franchise as I am for some others, but it's nice to know that they have planned another series of films for me to look forward to seeing for my birthday for the next several years.

On our way home from the movie, my husband and I stopped at Dairy Queen for dinner. There's one right up the street from us and it's hard not to eat their every day, never mind not being able to afford to. While waiting for our food to be finished to take home, I saw an oreo cookie crunch ice cream cake in the freezer and had an unreasonable craving. I pointed it out and said, "I want that for my birthday." My husband brought it home to me on his way from work that night several days later.

Half of it is still in my freezer. Please come eat it.

This year is probably going to be the hardest for me. I'm reminded of a concept I read about in the book Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman. Something to do with how women who have suffered the loss of their mothers trudge through the age in which they died, feeling a heavy shadow of fear and oppression, until that year passes and they can say, "I survived."

It feels utterly ridiculous for me to think that way. My mother wasn't terminally ill with some life-threatening disease that claimed her. I'm lead to believe she suffered mental illness, though. Some very strong depression in which she was on medication to try to combat. Her death certificate reads that single, pit-dropping-into-stomach word of suicide. Since discovering that "truth" in my teenage years, I have long since told myself that no matter how hard things got for me I would never be like her.

It's a conviction I've held onto strongly. I can say with satisfying honesty that there was only one point in my life in which I felt so downtrodden. And that was years and years ago, a lifetime before where I find myself now. I never attempted it. Only having the thought was enough, and I never had one like it again.

So it seems silly of me to think that I just have to make it through this year to have beat my mother's record, as it were. I can't say it's going to be hard. I like myself and my life too much. I love my husband and my children. I'm content. Though as a mother I definitely feel my daily stresses, I don't feel at all compelled to even remotely entertain the idea of ending it all. I want to see tomorrow, and all the days after it. I want to see my children grow. I want to see the adults they will become, and meet any possible grandchildren they might have of their own.

And yet... That heavy black cloud of mourning hangs heavily over me, making me think, "I only have to get through this year, and I will have surpassed her." She was 36 years and 256 days old the day she died. Her birthday was in September. She died in May. This year she will have been gone from my life for 28 years, and not a day goes by in which I do not miss her.

My father's birthday was two days ago. He would have been 72 years old. It was a cruel twist of fate that had him dying ten years, nearly precisely to the day, after my mother, his first wife. I imagine when I am 54 years old I will feel even more weighted down and terrified of the age. For that was how old he was at the time of his death, when his last and final heart attack claimed him. A family history of heart disease is more terrifying than one of suicide to bear, I think. Not to mention the breast cancer and bone cancer possibilities from my grandmothers on either side.

The one comfort I can find is in knowing, as my brother said, that my parents would be proud of the woman I have become today, of the choices I made to get where I am now. I know they would adore their grandchildren, though it saddens me beyond comprehension when I remember that they never met them. My children will never known their maternal grandparents but through pictures and the spotty memories I have of them.

I miss you terribly, Mom & Dad.

This is, I know, not the most uplifting way to start the year, but they are thoughts I felt compelled to get off my chest, to share. It has not been easy, raising my two baby girls without any parental support on my side whatsoever. I envy all my friends and neighbors who still have at least one living parent to support them, if not both. And I'm grateful for my brother, who helped me as I helped him, during the first few months of my Usurper's life.

Speaking of my Usurper... In just 23 days we will be celebrating the day of her birth, quietly. She turns three in February. Of course I have a big party planned for the weekend after her actual day of birth, but on her day we're going to go do something special as a family. I won't ruin the surprise by talking about it now. Hopefully I won't neglect to write about it later.

How a Stuffed Giraffe Became an Important Lesson On Loss

Today, the Overlord ran up the stairs from her play room, all the way to my office, to tell me, "Mommy! Giraffey's broken! His music winder thingy doesn't work anymore. Look! Can you fix him?"

Giraffey never had a name before today, by the way. The toy in question is a baby toy that Great-Grandma sent the Usurper when she was born. I think. The whys and the whens and wherefores aren't so very important to this story, though.

Basically, Giraffey is a plush music box. There's a wind-up key attached to its side. You wind it up. It plays a song. Well. No more, unfortunately. Something inside is broken, and neither me nor my husband know how to fix it. So...

Sadly, I told her, "No, honey. I'm sorry, but I can't fix this. There's nothing we can do about it. He's broken."

There was a look of absolute heartache on her face. The pout and the moisture in her eyes was nearly unbearable.

"Honey, I'm sorry, but I think it's time to say good-bye to Giraffey."

Her daddy came in to join us in the talk saying he couldn't fix Giraffey either. He told her she had the choice to keep him as is, broken but still able to be played with, or we could say good-bye. She chose to say good-bye. So I told her we'd send him to a faraway place where broken toys go after they can't be played with anymore.

This seemed kinder to me than telling her we were going to throw the toy in the trash. Little did I know it was going to turn into an elaborate story about Toy Heaven.

Later, I found her playing downstairs with her sister. They were having fun, giggling and make-believing with their My Little Pony toys. Then Lilah looked up with a pout and asked, "Mommy, where's Giraffey?"

"Honey..." The toy was upstairs, still. Her daddy was investigating it and trying to figure out if there really was any way to repair it, but we both knew it was a lost cause. So I told her, "Giraffey went to a faraway place where broken stuffies go when they no longer work, where they can live with other stuffies and be happy even though they can't be played with anymore."

As a nonreligious individual raising my children pretty much atheist, I never thought I'd be making a Heaven analogy to help my daughter deal with loss.

She accepted this story.

Later, upstairs while watching TV, she was pouting about Giraffey still, talking about how much she missed him. There were actual tears. I hugged her and told her, "Oh, honey. It's okay to feel sad when you miss something you love very much."

Wiping the tears off her cheeks broke me.

"Would it make you feel better to see Giraffey one more time, if he came back from the faraway place to say good-bye?"

"Yeah," she said.

So I got him back out of the closet where I'd stashed him to hide so she wouldn't keep asking us to try to fix him. She gathered him up in her arms and held him tight.

Unfortunately, her little sister was right there and wanted to play with Giraffey, too. It was a struggle getting her to let Amelia have the toy, but she relented when I told her to let her say good-bye in her own way. This was a concept that had to be drilled into her head repeatedly by both her father and me.

My husband told her, "You let Amelia say good-bye to Giraffey in her own way. He will stay with us until bedtime, and then he has to go."

Eventually she stopped trying to tell her sister to tell Giraffey good-bye. Some time later, she brought the toy back to me in my office.

"Mom, 'Melia put Giraffey down," she said, handing me the broken toy.

"Do you think Amelia's done saying good-bye to him then, in her own way?" I asked.

"Yeah."

Amelia didn't come running back to my office crying, so I figured it was true enough. Though, I'm also pretty sure she had no idea what was going on. The Usurper is only two and a half to the Overlord's almost five now!

Somehow she got the impression that the faraway place I mentioned was an island. I didn't correct her. I like the idea of it being an island. Somehow I'm sure that makes it seem more soothing and an okay place to be.

"Is the Faraway Island magical?" she asked me.

"Yes, dear. The Faraway Island is a magical place where all stuffies and broken toys can talk to each other and be happy when they can't be played with anymore."

I do not regret expounding upon my lie.

"Oh. I never heard Giraffey talk."

"Well, maybe if you listen very closely you'll hear him talk to you. ... Are you done saying good-bye now?"

"Yeah."

After dinner, we revisited with Giraffey one last time. I brought him out of my office and told Lilah, "Giraffey doesn't want you to be sad when he leaves, Lilah, so he told me he'd like to take a picture with you so you'll always have something to look at and remember him by."

So we took a couple of pictures, both of Lilah with Giraffey and Amelia with Giraffey.

Lilah came back to talk to me a little more about Giraffey and the Faraway Island. She told me she really wanted to see the Island and see all the talking toys. I told her that'd be nice. She asked where it was. "Is it up in the sky?"

"Maybe," I told her. "It's so faraway that even I don't know where it is, honey. I've never seen it. I'm not a toy, so I can't go there."

"Oh," she said. "I hope there's a moon there. The moon is magical. It's like an island."

All I could do was smile as she walked away.