Strawbaby had a dance recital this week. Cue the sparkly costumes, dear in headlights expressions while watching their instructor for the next move, and parents with phones out like Swifties at a TayTay concert. This wasn’t Strawbaby’s first recital, she had one in December, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it at the time. I was too confused.
With Memorial Day approaching, this felt like the perfect time to share a post written for Inchstones by Paulette Bilby, a hospice chaplain. During the two months that hospice workers were in our home I learned the beauty of their work, helping our family prepare for a life without a physical Adelaide all while keeping her as comfortable as possible and explaining to us what was happening, what to expect and what Adelaide needed now. End of life is difficult, scary and emotional in all the ways you are well aware of, but we don’t have to do it alone.
I have long struggled with feelings of guilt. Give me a scenario, interaction or circumstance and I can usually find something that I said or did to feel bad about. I even feel guilt for feeling guilty. How effed up is that? It’s like a crazy guilt loop that I can’t escape. While the sources of my guilt spirals are immeasurable I have recently isolated one that I hope to use as an exit ramp… and ideally in time to teach these lessons to my emotional mini-me.
We’ve all heard the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child”. Well, it took becoming a mother before I realized just how true that statement is. Whether it’s carpooling to school events, lifting each other up with funny meme’s, or stepping in as the reliever when you witness your friend on their last nerve with their melting down toddler – it sooo takes a village. What I’m understanding now is how grieving a child takes a village as well.
Last week’s post got me thinking about exposing death to children and how those experiences mold them as they grow. Perhaps this was a bit more front of mind because Hayden’s House, the retreat home I attended several years ago that, “provides a safe, tranquil space for bereaved mothers, fathers, couples, children and families to heal and connect together through a variety of methods…” was forced to put their retreat home on the market by their HOA.
“Mommy! Mommy! Can you put your lipstip on me ?!” I put tinted lip gloss on Strawbaby once and have been regretting it ever since.
“When I’m done with my work, ok? Why don’t you draw a picture?”
Two minutes later…
“Mommy, look at my picture! It’s for baby Adelaide! Can I give it to her?”
And there it was. The conversation I knew we would have sooner or later was happening today at this very moment.
Welp, that springtime induced calm and happiness lasted a whole week before the storm clouds rolled in hot and heavy. By Monday morning I was answering for that week of fair weather motivated procrastination. Seriously, how does one family produce so much laundry? And why does sending my children to school result in me having to read and respond to a bajillion emails per week concerning said school?
It’s hard to not be in a good mood during those first warm days of spring, when the sky is clear, the flowers are blooming, and the trees start to bud. I feel (self-imposed) pressure to maintain a state of happiness like it’s an achievement to be unlocked in a video game. But what I am coming to understand is that life, our emotions, our state of mind is always going to be in flux. That pure unfiltered joy is not the status quo - and that's not only ok it is healthy and normal.
For those of us well-versed in epilepsy, the connection between seizures and their psychological effects is a no-brainer (pun intended). However, the lack of available providers and treatments is all at once infuriating and devastating. This is a topic that comes up all too often during my interviews for CURE Epilepsy’s Seizing Life podcast. It is also one that this week’s guest blogger, Yarrow Rubin beautifully describes in a powerful essay.
Inchstone celebration coming at you! I’m not entirely sure when I reached it exactly, it sort of snuck up on me, but at some point I started thinking about the future again. And not just thinking about it, but actually looking forward to it – even planning for it. Some future thought is inevitable: schedules must be made, kids activities signed up for, babysitters booked. The kind of future thought I’ve caught myself engaging in is more like daydreaming or borderline manifesting. It is equally hopeful and utterly terrifying.
“Pause it.” I told Miguel. We were on our couch watching The Last of Us. “I’ve had a realization and I need to say out loud so I don’t forget it.” Miguel acquiesced accustomed to my sporadic needs to verbalize my revelations. “Why is it that most of the time when a tv or movie character experiences deep loss, especially the loss of a child, they are forever depressed, sulking and generally unlikable? I mean its no wonder that people struggle as much as they do in grief and guilt when their main entertainment examples are so miserable!”
It dawned on me this week that I am real-time witnessing Jackson’s gradual shift from childhood to pre-teen teendom. That we only have years (months?) of childhood left. And we are all clinging to his vanishing childhood like Strawbaby to a piece of cake.
