The Heights and Depths

Last night I dreamt that I held Elle's dead body.

When I held her for the last time, she had thick tubes running to and from her body that were hooked up to bulky machines. When I dressed her body days later, she was wrapped in plastic to prevent fluids from staining her clothes. Mia was with me and wishing she weren't. I wanted to hold Elle but felt prevented from doing it. It was my last chance, and I didn't take it.

So, last night I dreamt that I held her dead body free of tubes and coverings for what seemed like hours. Sometimes she would say something or move around. I knew she was dead, but I didn't want to bury her.

I've been reading about dreams. (Is this akin to astrology?
Oh well...)

If you dream of someone who has recently passed away, ... their death is still freshly in your mind. You are still trying to grasp the notion that he or she is really gone. You don't want to be alone.

To dream of your dead child is a way for you to keep your child alive through your dreams. For a parent to lose a child is extremely difficult. Such dreams occur because you still cannot accept or understand how or why your child was taken from you so soon.

The heights and depths of grief always surprise me. I don't write when I feel good, because it comes across as denial. And why wouldn't it? I can hardly believe myself that I can feel happy and live a life without her. But really, I was doing so well for several weeks. I felt like if I never got better than I was then for the rest of my life, I would be ok. Not great, but fine. I couldn't have said that during the first year or so. Staying in that state would have compromised me—made me less of who I was meant to be. But, the last several weeks I had felt hope and more acceptance of our new situation. 

Even as I typed that word, acceptance, the tears started flowing again. Memorial Day was the trigger this time for sliding me down the grief slope once more. I couldn't stem the tide at Target when I heard a little girl singing a made-up song in her mom's shopping cart. A few days ago I took down the pink striped shower curtain that had hung in the kids' bathroom. Little by little the evidences of having a little girl are disappearing from our lives. No matter how much I cry or how I long to hold her, she's not coming back here.

But the fact that I consistently felt ok for about a month and a half means I will feel that way again. And I'll keep getting better. Even in the depths, I now have a greater capacity to bear up under it.

And that gives me hope.