Skip to main content

No More Shadows

We sit in her room with the happy, pink flowers hanging on the wall and the butterfly curtains billowing- the babies and I.  They lay on the bright, white bedspread and I show them the things that were special to their big sister, Makiah...  her purple, shell necklace that sings The Little Mermaid's song because she wore it all the time and drove me crazy playing the song... her tiny ballerina bear because she wanted to "be a ballerina not when I'm a grown up but now while I'm a little girl..."  her baby doll that giggles because she loved babies and wanted brothers and sisters more than anything in the world.  I show them her picture and they grin and reach for her, well, for it.  I get out the video camera.  Then it hits me.  The profound sadness of it all.  I am taping my girls' reactions to their sister's picture.  Because I can't video their reaction to their sister.  I almost never cry in front of the twins, but today I cannot keep the tears from falling.

I run my fingers over some of her last art projects from school.  I pick up the baby doll and think how wrong it is that the batteries lasted longer than my little girl.  I have been finding "tiny fings" of hers all over the house lately.  A mermaid stamp in the kitchen drawer.  A pink barbie mirror in her daddy's socks.  A little aphid picture from The Ladybug Game under the living room rug.  A tiny barbie shoe on my closet floor.  And a breakfast bar I had packed for her in a purse that I pulled out of my closet.  I feel sick.  I used to put these things away, but now I leave them where I find them.  I can't stand the thought of having no more reminders of her to pop up around the house.  So they have become sacred in their hiding places under rugs and beneath socks.  I can never clean too deeply lest I wipe away all the signs of her.  The tangibles that remind me of happy days when she was tangible.

I feel inside a mounting... of what I do not know.  Eleven days until her heaven day.  It seems that it should be cataclysmic.   This day that is coming.  This marking of the days.   Even the ancients mourned on certain days.  This dreading and enduring and exhaling when it is past and we have survived.  What is it in us that cannot help but mark these anniversaries?  A verse pops in my mind... "Deep calls out to deep."  I wrote the other day that the Bible says God has put eternity in the hearts of men.  Maybe it is that place in us that yearns wistfully for these days to be set right.  For the tragedies to be undone.  For time not to matter so much.

As I film my babies playing with their sister's things, I wonder if all our memorable moments will now be quietly marked by sadness.  Not overtly, but always there beneath the surface.  In a deep place.  Like a shadow that has been cast across my life, her death tinges everything a slightly different shade.  As I hear the ticking of the clock in my soul, the approach of the one year anniversary, I weep for what is lost and I long for what is to come.  The day when there will be no more marking of sad days... no more holding our breath in sickening anticipation... no more shadows.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Deafening Silence

In a single second my life has been radically altered.  My precious gift from God, sweet Makiah Kaitlyn, has gone to be with Jesus long before her time.  I know in my heart that she is happy, but my arms are so empty... my house so dreadfully quiet.  I feel at times that a horrible blackness has enveloped me.  I feel as though my insides are screaming.  I am clawing and fighting to break out of this torturous body- to escape from this oppressive reality, but I cannot escape.  The dark anguish leaps on me again and again.  It sits on my chest and presses against my very life breath.  My heart feels utterly crushed and broken- pummeled into a thousand pieces.  Life as I knew it has been shattered and the shards that are left are painful and sharp.  Cutting me as I try to walk through them.  This is the valley of the shadow of death.  How dark is that shadow! Her room is perfectly untouched.  All of the dolls in her dollhouse family are piled into their little bed together where she lef

Toes

Outside the sky is grey and dreary.  I feel it should rain torrents today.  I think the whole earth should cry out in grief.  I feel my heart pounding in my head.  My eyes will barely open, and I think no more tears can possibly come.  Maybe I will stand in the rain and borrow the tears from the sky. I look down at sparkly pink toes, and they are lonely.  Makiah, our last Sunday together you spent the morning in bed with Mommy (because I am on bed rest).  We ate fruit loops and snuggled.  We practiced drawing your letters and painted our fingers and toes.  You wanted rainbow toes, but I didn't have the colors with me.  I promised I'd paint you rainbow toes later.  Once we were all pink you said, "I got an idea!  Let's put sparklies over the pink, and you have to do it, too, Mommy, so we can be twins!"  You are such a princess!  So pink toes became sparkly toes.  We giggled and hugged and admired our matching feet. Now mine sit all alone.  Ten toes that should

Wells of Living Water

My eyes filled with tears when my mother-n-law told me of her friend's idea.  This sweet lady, whom I've never met, wanted to know if she could do something special in honor of Makiah.  She said God had put it on her heart to start a well project for her.  She would sell "living water well charms" through Operation Blessing International to raise money to build a well for underprivelaged children in a poverty stricken country.  She said when 600 charms have been purchased, a well with a permanent plaque would be built to commemorate Makiah's life.  Not only was this an amazing idea, it was linked to my daughter's heart in a way that shocked me... What this thoughtful lady could not have known was that only 2 weeks before the accident, Makiah came into the kitchen on a Sunday morning carrying her whole piggy bank.  She told me she wanted to take it all to "give to the kids who need clean water."  The preschool class at church had been raising money