Buster buries his head deeper into his black and white fur and cat bed- trying to avoid the shrieking sobs. I can no longer avoid them. I sit in her floor flanked by her tiny, pink princess bed and the little kitchen and store where she loved to play and hideout. Armed with plastic tubs and ziplock bags, the dreadful day to clean up some of her things has come. I cannot put it off forever. Her decor and dollhouse and shelves with precious things will stay, but it cannot all remain untouched forever. How do I choose the precious things?
I group Snow White and the dwarves together... then Aladdin and his friends. I pick up a pink, flowery bucket and start to remove the plastic food. Then a sweet memory leaps on me. I was laying on the couch on bed rest, and she brought me the bucket. One item at a time she asked, "Mommy, do you like (onions, oranges, etc.) in your soup?" She carefully added each ingredient to the bucket as she eagerly prepared my special meal. She giggled with delight when I pretended to gobble it all up. My last bucket of "soup." Here it is just like she prepared it. The camera flashes and so does the despair within me. No amount of tears or sobs or screaming questions can change this. But I try. The heavens remain seemingly silent- impervious to my cries. Still the toys are waiting all around me so with sagging shoulders I trudge on.
I open the purple doors of her kitchen set, and my eyes become swelling pools again. There inside are the tiny twin baby dolls. They were mine when I was a child, and since the day we found out I was pregnant with twins, Makiah had made them her permanent companions, even tucking them into bed with her each night. She took them to school one day for show and tell (in her "me bag") so she could talk about the two babies in Mommy's tummy and how excited she was to be a big sister. I thought we had lost the precious dolls in the wreck. I hadn't been able to find them. But here they are. She had gingerly laid them side by side to nap safely in their little hiding place until she returned home to find them. I snap more pictures of her hope incarnate... trying to capture a physical reminder of the love she already had for her sisters- so intangible. She is now so intangible.
The babies have hardly moved today. I think I have terrified them with the cries. Mostly they are accustomed to silence... not the sweet chattering that they were meant to hear. Although when I am watching videos of her, they sometimes seem to kick and come alive at the sound of her voice. Her voice on tape. Her toys in bags. Her sisters in silence. Things are not as they should be.
I group Snow White and the dwarves together... then Aladdin and his friends. I pick up a pink, flowery bucket and start to remove the plastic food. Then a sweet memory leaps on me. I was laying on the couch on bed rest, and she brought me the bucket. One item at a time she asked, "Mommy, do you like (onions, oranges, etc.) in your soup?" She carefully added each ingredient to the bucket as she eagerly prepared my special meal. She giggled with delight when I pretended to gobble it all up. My last bucket of "soup." Here it is just like she prepared it. The camera flashes and so does the despair within me. No amount of tears or sobs or screaming questions can change this. But I try. The heavens remain seemingly silent- impervious to my cries. Still the toys are waiting all around me so with sagging shoulders I trudge on.
I open the purple doors of her kitchen set, and my eyes become swelling pools again. There inside are the tiny twin baby dolls. They were mine when I was a child, and since the day we found out I was pregnant with twins, Makiah had made them her permanent companions, even tucking them into bed with her each night. She took them to school one day for show and tell (in her "me bag") so she could talk about the two babies in Mommy's tummy and how excited she was to be a big sister. I thought we had lost the precious dolls in the wreck. I hadn't been able to find them. But here they are. She had gingerly laid them side by side to nap safely in their little hiding place until she returned home to find them. I snap more pictures of her hope incarnate... trying to capture a physical reminder of the love she already had for her sisters- so intangible. She is now so intangible.
The babies have hardly moved today. I think I have terrified them with the cries. Mostly they are accustomed to silence... not the sweet chattering that they were meant to hear. Although when I am watching videos of her, they sometimes seem to kick and come alive at the sound of her voice. Her voice on tape. Her toys in bags. Her sisters in silence. Things are not as they should be.
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