Ripples and Tidal Waves (28)

Just a couple of months after my sixteenth birthday I gave birth to my first child. Biologically perfect timing, but mentally and emotionally I was clearly only semi-equipped. And yet... the perfect creature entered my life and I became a mother. The best job I could ever imagine, then and now. 

Over the next few years Elannah Rose grew into a wonderful, loving, and funny little child. Her existence was all the motivation I needed to really nail the whole “adulting” thing, which somehow seemed less intimidating and complex than it does today. I didn’t nail it, but I felt like I was doing ok. Life was perfect in its imperfection. 

Elannah Rose joined me at college, concerts, music festivals, and almost every other new experience. She was my little mini-me. I don’t think I ever questioned whether she would be welcome at whatever I was doing and I was blessed to  make friends with people who welcomed and loved her dearly. 

As she grew up (as we both grew up) life changed, our family grew. Eventually, the source of my original and purest joy became the source of my greatest pain. 

I can’t adequately describe the hole that fills her void. It’s the pit of despair, the monster in the deep, deep, dark. The clown in the gutter. The insidious fog in the air. 

“Still?”  Wish I had the courage to answer that the way I want to, but I guess I still have too many fucks to give. 

Nothing that I have experienced, before or after she left us, has compared to the anguish and the vacuum that losing her created. Elannah Roses birthdays mark the transition from this intense annual mourning into a more normal state of mind, but the hole is always there. The absence of her is tangible. And as I have learned, nothing is really not the trigger. 

So, here I sit. In my little yellow chair, earphones tucked in and volume at maximum, memories rolling over me. Gentle ripples and tidal waves. Figuring out how to get through the day, yet again. 

Why? (Eight Years)

Eyes burning, throat constricted, I want to scream and break things. To stand howling in the wind, at the world… Why?  Why my child? My protector of the small. My girl so full of life that her tiny body could barely contain it.

She is gone. Rotting. Left vibrant only in our memories, in our pictures, in random recordings which capture her voice, her face, her laughter, her getting high. WHY?

What could we have done differently? At any point, before she began experimenting, during her initial drug use, or after when she was hooked and convinced that she was beyond hope. Was there anything more that we could have done? Should have done.

I think about this constantly. So much of life is about striving to be better, to be more successful. There is one place that this really matters beyond all doubt. As parent’s we owe it to our children to learn from past mistakes and use that to be better, don’t we? How could I have been better? What didn’t I do? What did I do? I need so badly to know, and I know I never will.

Is there a time that I yelled when I could have been gentle? Should I have found a way to be more engaged? I wish that I would have known which signs were meaningful. When I should have left her alone and when I should have refused.

Why my sweet girl? I used to think that life only gave you the lessons you could handle… what you were meant to learn. But these things cannot happen in a world with any grand design. Lost children, destroyed by diseases that they were too young, naïve, and irresponsible to avoid. This is not how it is supposed to go. 

And I must remember that this was not my story. It was her story. Her beautiful, epic, tragic story. I would give anything to have her back, but none of this was my choice.  Not even having her, really. Because there was never an option not to. From the moment that little being took hold my future was written. Was hers? Eight years later and I still can't believe it ended like this.

Eight years... just thinking about that is enough to push me back over the edge.

I can talk myself into and out of blame for hours. I can hold this conversation with myself forever. But I can never answer why. I can never get closer to understanding why I do not get to hug her anymore. Why she doesn't get to have all of the chapters she is supposed to in her life. In her story.

I want her back with a desperate rage that I cannot contain. With a grief that will, I think, forever be bigger than me and my broken heart. I do not forgive the person who left her. I do not forgive this world that took her from me. I do not forgive myself. And if there is a grand design, I find myself hating it.

I must admit that ultimately, there is no reason. There is nothing fair, there is nothing I can cling to that allows me to make sense of this loss. There is no answer to my question. There is no why.

Elannah Rose (left) and me

Backsliding

This is the time of year when I feel like I’m backsliding into a broken heart. I spend the year healing, learning to become more comfortable in my current state, figuring out how to be without my firstborn child. In May, as we draw closer and closer to her death day, I feel a hole growing inside of me. I sit on the brink of tears, the smallest thing tipping me over the edge. 

It always takes a few days to adjust to the constant intensity. From July through April I’ve learned to adapt and roll with this persistent grief. May and June are not my friends. They are not the time to make decisions, changes, sometimes even conversation. 

This year I feel guilty as I feel the loss washing over me. Who am I to wallow when so many are grieving, scared, and in a silo while Covid 19 strikes fear in our hearts and the worldwide lockdowns ravage our security, both financial and emotional. 

But grief is a selfish master. I want my daughter back. I want to hear her laugh. I would take everything and anything to have her creating joy and trouble. I give in to this selfishness, I want to stop explaining that I really have three kids. I want her to be 28, not forever 19. More than anything, I want to hug my child.

Unfortunately, the magic that brought this girl to me was a one-time thing. I wish I could sleep through the part of the year that makes it so hard to find a way forward. I wish I could stop backsliding, even though I am horrified at what that would mean. 
I am incomplete without her.