The package arrived. I ran my hand over the smooth surface allowing unbridled emotion to build. An overwhelming outpour was near at hand. I embraced it, my hand still stroking the glossy letters like an old lady petting her favorite cat. A deep breath resulting in a long, contented sigh escaped me. Emma was in this long, flat, shiny box with PRIORITY MAIL running the full perimeter. I knew what it was, and yet – I didn’t. I have waited for this for years.
***
Those seven words describe my immediate reaction to so much of my current life.
I am a stay at home mom with a flexible schedule to meet the needs of my kids. – I have waited for this for years.
I am a writer using words to touch hearts and inspire healing. – I have waited for this for years.
My first child, my missing child, is a priority. – I have waited for this for years.
But nowhere in my life does this sentence apply more than to the true friends I have met through my various internet outreaches in the last year. I do not know their faces. I do not know where they call home. I do not know what kind of car they drive, what color hair they have, or what they do for a living. It doesn’t matter. I have waited for them for years.
We connect from the inside out. We know each other’s hearts. We know each other’s losses, far too well. We trust each other with the raw and bitter admissions others cannot hear. Our ((hugs)) and XOXOs mean more than the post-loss meals and casseroles left by family and neighbors. They are my lifeline to the past and the future. They keep me in the present. They are the reason I truly understand what friendship means: friendship without comparison, without judgments, without expectations.
I wish I known this a very long time ago.
***
When Emma died the internet had yet to make its community building transformation, effectively lifting up grieving parents with connectedness and daily support from around the globe. I was left to search for small slivers of hope within my small, rural town. My loss was the exception to the often delivered rule. I met no one to share my acute pain. Instead, I turned to my best friend hoping for the Hollywood, fairy tale ending where she slowly, but steadily led me toward an inevitable epiphany and I was healed from the inside out.
We met when I was 18, young and moderately wild – as exploratory as one can be in a southern Vermont town. It was the summer before college. We did everything together: work, play, club, party, search for boys at the lake, and countless other forgettable activities that filled our days and nights. She met my high-school based definition of best friend. And so, I took to calling her that. Yet, no matter how far back I search in my memory of that summer or the years that followed, I don’t recall her using the adjective to describe me.
The semantic properties of friendship hierarchy aside, years later while staring at her through bloodshot eyes, I found the word association curious. I gawked as though seeing the world for first time. No bells. No whistles. Just the hard truth that perspective is rarely double sided. Without emotion, like a linguistics professor dissecting a foreign language, I studied both my overuse and her neglect of the adjective. I broke into my social paradigms. The findings were bleak. I discovered my deepest, darkest, most lacking places reflected back at me from the pedestal I placed her on. I had given her such power in my life. She was the first person I called when I saw two pink lines, my matron of honor at our wedding and –according to my former self– the “obvious choice” as Godmother. With my blinders pulled tightly, I had allowed her to judge me, accepting her analysis of my words, my clothes, and my actions as fact.
And then, Emma died. Like a caterpillar finding its wings, my re-birth into the world began. I grew up, became more independent, more cognizant of what I wanted. I stopped defining myself by the world’s approved projections. I looked within and for first time had faith in my choices, knowing they came from a place of worth. I sent out a search party for the self-depreciating parts of myself that used phrases like “not good enough”, “I could be wrong, but”, and “if you think I should”. Once found, they were discarded and replaced their empty spaces with affirming actions.
A shift ensued. The strain on our relationship was nearly tangible. I began to see our relationship for the misguided self-esteem search it really was. Our bond began the slow and painful process of unraveling, like a ball of yarn following gravity’s slope on a slightly tilted floor. We tried –that is a fact I would be remiss not to mention- for in those first few months after Emma’s death she stepped up in a way that I had never known from her before. She came and sat, just to be with me. A selfless act of sadness, grief, and friendship. She gifted me a journal containing a profound sentiment. She did my laundry. And yet, every time she was in the room I felt the need to pretend, to be the lesser of the two of us, for there was no option to be equals in this. We had never been. How could we start now? Did the death of my child promote me?
We went through the motions, days and weeks then months separating us from that rainy fall, and then she said this, “Don’t you think you should be over this by now? Don’t you feel like you should give living another try?” I truly think she believed her words were noble, but in suggesting an endpoint to my grief, she committed the worst possible offense in post-loss protocol. There is no timeline for grieving! I wanted to scream it, wanted to let my emotions spill out of me like a tea-kettle boiling over, yet once again I remained silent even as a one-sided epiphany settled within me. She took my silence as admission, a non-verbal assent that I had, indeed, used up my allotted time for grief. I knew better. Our friendship was over: the new me and the old her, it didn’t work.
The last threads of erosion were painless. There was no dramatic fight. There was no emotional confrontation. Our connection died with phone calls not made, movies not seen and party invitations that never came in the mail. With it, died another dream of mine. You see, she is an artist. A good one with the ability to draw or sketch anything with uncanny likeness. I always harbored an unspoken wish that she would pen Emma for us, a large, framed vision of our girl as we wanted to remember her.
We only have one picture of Emma. She is wearing a hat I’ve never seen before. Her body is bathed in pink and blue hospital blanket stripes. Only part of her gorgeous face is visible. I both love and hate the picture. One day, I was sure I would sit beside my best friend, share a smile, and as she studied the details of our baby’s face my words would lead her hand. “Give her a simple, classy bonnet. And put her bunny in her hand. Let me see her whole face and take away the blanket. Put her in a soft, flowing dress so as not to distract from her beauty.”
But my dead baby scares her. I’m sure once she has one of her own she will get it, I told myself on too many occasions, making excuses for her lack of empathy one year, two years, five years later. She didn’t. She didn’t have to because her baby lived, so trying to see the world through my eyes – one who left the hospital empty handed, was a choice. “I just couldn’t go there,” she told me sadly.
In a desperate attempt to rekindle our connection, I asked.
“Would you be willing to do a sketch of Emma? I only have the one hospital picture and I really want something more.”
“Sure,” she hedged in that maternal maybe means no voice, “I’m sure I can do that, sometime.”
She never did. I reminded once, then gave it up for a favor never intended to be done. Once again, the truth was blinding me. She could have done it. Her talent runs deep. But, truly, she couldn’t because from the day Emma died we began walking away from each other.
And so, I was done – not angry, not ever bitter – just done.
***
I stood, still caressing the package in my hands. Tears had already formed in my lower lids. I searched the return address finding a name I never knew from a city I’d never been to. I’ve waited for this for years. Like a pregnant woman stroking her bulging belly, I loved the contents without needing a visual. Slowly, I peeled back the wrapping revealing my daughter’s bonneted head, her bunny in hand, the gown perfect in its simplicity. It is beyond stunning. No longer able to contain them tears cascaded to my chest. I loved knowing the woman, the mother who moved pencil over paper to create my Emma’s sketch, was motivated by understanding, by her own loss.
With shaking hands I opened the card.
“Dear Cara, Thank you for allowing me to create this portrait of Emma Grace for you. I’m afraid I haven’t done her justice – she’s such a beautiful girl. I feel as though I now know and love the contours of her face.”
And so hindsight has once again laid its wisdom on my heart. Had a portrait hung on my wall for years, it would have represented emotionless work – done because I asked for it, insisted on it.
Emma deserves so much more. The framed image that now hangs on my light blue living room wall is infinitely more than pencil meeting paper. It is the selfless gift of a common soul. Love, gratitude, and peace fill me each and every time I look at her gorgeous face.
These are the emotions I deserve.
I have learned what true friendship feels like: friendship without comparison, without judgments, without expectations.
I have a lot of friends. I don’t have a best friend. I do not see the need.