The plane landed, slowing with uneven jerks and hesitant brakes, allowing us time to register the ground, to find our center before walking back into the world.
I’m here. I made it.
It seemed my whole world was full of roadblocks. The past few days, they had begun appearing everywhere I looked. In my home, in my community, and now even a plane ride away. The voids in my life emerged, nearly tangible, absolutely visible – to my trained and sorrowfuleyes. Grief season had begun, accompanied by constant shadows ready to attack at any part of my day. They were sent by invisible triggers and only banished by a good cry and a forced replay of the worn road I had traveled too many times in my mind. Please don’t attack me here, in public, on this plane.
But there was no negotiating with this season of grief, of memory.
Annually, as the leaves changed color, so did my mood. Emma’s birthday loomed. It changed my air quality. I was forced to take longer, deeper breaths to keep my bearings. I looked at the scenery of my life with a wider lens. I went inward more often, unable to attend to the daily responsibilities that came with a marriage, a family and a home. Just as the leaves are destined to fall, my visions attacked year after year. I thought I could escape them. I thought enough time had gone by. I thought a plane ride and a well-planned convention would pose a viable defense.
One by one, all the passengers departed, and auto-pilot kicked in. I followed their lead, and then stood in the terminal for a long time, oscillating like a fan, taking in my new setting. I was unsure of where togo next. To the hotel? To conference registration? To a bar?
Where can I go where this foreboding won’t find me?
* * *
After Emma died, I longed for noise to deafen the “what should have beens.” Subsequent years of pregnancy, breastfeeding, high-pitched crying in the night and babies babbling had created a symphony of external noise in the form of Emma’s sisters.
But today, wandering through the airport like a lost child, without direction, unaware of clocks or schedules – the noise stopped. I was alone, without diapers to change, carpools to run, or toothless grins to deflect a heavy heart. The world stilled. Introspection consumed me. I felt Emma everywhere. Here, on a bright warm day, with the hot August sun streaming through large, glass panels, I was a mother to a daughter in heaven, parenting through grief. A pull, an innate desire from deep within suggested, focus on Emma. Your New Year is at hand. Be her mother, exclusively, for just a few days.
* * *
Three days later, after smiling for cameras, nodding as guest speakers delivered inspirational talks, and taking more notes than I had in years - I finally listened to my inner voice. Instead of taking a left into my afternoon session, I took a right – right out the door.
Walking the streets of Minneapolis felt freeing. Few people passed me as I ambled slowly from block to block, trying to reconcile the myriad of bittersweet emotions rolling through me. Struck by sudden inspiration, I pulled a small notepad and a pen from my shoulder bag. I sat, legs folded, on a large stone bench, and knew she was there. As my heart overflowed with love, guilt, sadness, more questions, and even a small measure of acceptance, I wrote Emma her birthday letter.
My sweet girl, walking with me through this life, I can’t believe you are five years old…
It was when I looked up, four pages later, that the sign came into focus. I wiped away my remaining tears and saw a sign that read “GAP,” with a smaller but more inviting sign underneath it: “SALE.” I stood, watching my legs move without intention. The world appeared fuzzy in my post letter-writing state, but innate frugality led me across the cobblestone, through their door and to the clearance rack. Slowly, I moved hangers taking in outfit after outfit, in a way that only a childless mother can do. I looked without regard for size, color, or price.
What would her favorite color have been? Would she have looked adorable in these tailored shorts, or would the pleated dresses been more her style?
I floated through the store, existing in a space that could neither be categorized as “of the world” or “led by spirit.” Holding back another waterfall of tears, reality reminded me that dead babies don’t wear high-end clothing. Even so, fantasies played in my mind. Shopping with my daughter, smiling and laughing through a fancy lunch, then returning to the store and attending intensely to size, color and style, we would leave with bags of clothes. She would wear them over and over again.
“Emma? Emma? Where are you?”
I stopped short, spun around. My breath hitched, but I saw nobody.
I must be hearing things. I am truly losing it. Just leave, finish your walk and clear your head.
As I made to step towards the exit, the voice came again, worried, urgent.
“Emma, come out right now! This is not funny.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head, attempting to shake out the last wisps of fantasy. When I opened them, they appeared in front of me, a mother and daughter. I saw a version of myself kneeling down and taking a five-year-old girl by the shoulders. With a voice balanced in relief and fear, I said, she said:
“Emma. Always stay close to me in stores. You could get lost. You might be taken. I never want to lose you.”
I was incapable of functioning one more minute under the pretense of “being strong.” My Emma did get lost. She was taken away and I lost her forever. My broken body sunk to find the floor, right there, between two carousels of upscale clothing.
The mother’s face shifted from fear of the unknown to relief as she embraced her daughter. Then, in unison, both faces turned, streaked with confusion as they watched me join them on the floor. And then it happened. That fair-haired mother looked straight through me. She stared without apology. Her smile grew as our eyes met and comprehension flowed. Emma tried to speak, but her mother shushed her with a hand to one arm. Softly this woman spoke, in a confident yet gentle voice.
“You have a daughter like mine, don’t you?” It was a rhetorical question. She was a medium, by profession. “I can see her,” she added, “right next to you.”
I sobbed without pretense, fingering at the patch of rug next to my right hip. I wept with relief that I didn’t have to explain, relief that she had been walking with me all afternoon as I felt her presence with such conviction.
I want to see her. I want to know her face, her body, her hair, just … her.
But that is not my gift. In that moment, my job was to embrace the emotion – to let go of logic and order, and allow my seams to come apart in the middle of a retail store. To banish time lines and anniversaries and just listen to a stranger affirm my child’s spirit.
That August day, I learned my first worldly lesson that space and time are no match for a mother/child connection. Countless times in the years that followed, I have been in a public place when an unexpected trigger attacked. I have been struck by a sensation of oneness. I have disintegrated into a ball of nothingness. I have felt the world staring, fearing, and occasionally even judging me as my tears flowed without permission in a movie theatre, at the mall, in the grocery store.
I could hear my own directions: don’t try to push your grief away. It only returns with more fervor. It only returns at a time when you are less ready. Instead, stop whatever you are doing and allow yourself to feel. Cara, it is okay to feel, anywhere. It is okay to grieve, regardless of location. It hurts. At time, it literally feels like your heart is tearing, but in truth, your heart is beginning the process of repairing itself and creating a stronger you.
I did not choose this path, but I walk it with pride. I finally learned to stop fighting, to embrace the moment when my grief appears. I am now on a lifelong journey for knowledge, for acceptance, for clarity, and the integrated peace that flows into my heart when I hear my daughter’s name, and turn to my husband to share a genuine smile in memory of our child.