I just read an article written by a mom who lost her daughter to a high driver ten years ago. This article (i'll link it with this post) made me bawl and made me smile at the same time. It's amazing how, despite how different every parent's loss is, they are all SO similar...she talks about making people uncomfortable, she talks about the friends that disappear, the anniversary dates that suck, happy occasions that are always fringed with tears. It's really an amazing story I encourage everyone to read it. Anyway, at the end of the article she references another reading where the author says that when we die we remain as afterglows in the minds of the ones who love us the most. My girls have been the light of my life since Khaily was born. Being a mom is my biggest blessing ever in the history of everything. But, when I read that, I saw the Northern Lights in my mind, and I thought about the glowsticks that I have taken out every night since the funeral, and about the sparkle in her eyes and the light of her smile. This kind of heartache takes all these beautiful things and, instead of a "silver lining" effect, adds a fog around everything that once was so bright in our lives. I spend countless hours reliving the good times, the hugs and snuggles, the carseat dances, the bathtime splashes...and while these things make me smile at her memory, a heartbroken tear is never far behind. I never wanted memories. I never wanted an afterglow. I was supposed to be HER afterglow, not vice versa. I think all the time about how amazing she would have grown up to be...with as much love as she had already as a child, with her adventurous spirit and her perfect little heart of gold...with as much as she was at 19 months old, I can only imagine what she would have been at 19 years old. It kills me to have to imagine it. I wanted to see it. I cry all the time, especially around this time of the month---today is three months she's been gone----and sometimes it feels like the tears are going to swallow me whole, that the grief is going to eat me alive and there will be nothing left. I always look for the light at the end of the tunnel, and she is my light at the end of the tunnel. And while that makes me acutely aware of how long the tunnel really is...statistically another 50-60 years long....it's so worth it...I just want to make her proud...in a sense I still am her afterglow, or at least I can be if I do it right.
Article: Dear Kate: Living with Grief
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