Our beautiful, wildly talented, mystical, magical daughter has died. She was 18, only just. She was our youngest. The three in a trio of wonderful human beings we are so blessed to call “our daughters”.

This is me, here, sharing what I’ve written to her. Sharing what she has written throughout her life. She was always a writer, a keen observer, an active participant in the enormity of all of life. You would have liked her. Everyone did. She would have looked you in the eyes and waited to hear your story.

She had a part time gig at a full serve gas station out here in our rural part of the world. Everyday she would come home and regale us with stories from the people she met. She was a tender heart, always watching for the isolated and pained, so she could go to them and offer up a little bit of connection and care.

I hope I can do her justice through my words in even the most infinitesimally minute way. Our relationship with her has not ended, it evolves. She continues to teach us to be present, to feel the language she speaks now. I have not “lost” her, she is not “gone”. She is beyond my capabilities while I live on this physical plain so I stretch and I reach to meet her where I might.

My writing is raw. Buffering for comfort would only serve to dilute truth. If I am not honest, there is no point. If you have recently had someone that you love die, I may be too much. But I believe that healing comes from being immersed in whatever may come. Grief saturates my every cell, just as my love for her does.

I live on a farm surrounded by wild forests. It’s in that forest that I have built a stone alter. I walk to that alter everyday with a handful of flowers, wild when they’re available, from my garden as the wild flowers now start to go to seed. I talk to my daughter there. I pray to God there. It is my daily pilgrimage of connection and healing and love. It’s my dedicated time to listen with humility and vulnerability.

Here is where I share some pictures of my offerings, my flowers for Mila, along with what I wrote on that day. I am called to share this but I do so with great hesitation. I trust that the relentless urges and prompts I keep receiving from my daughter to share (she was, and clearly remains, a tenacious one) will bloom in ways beyond my understanding. And that’s good enough for me.

With love,

Tara

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My daughter has left this world. Onto another. I am here, left to excavate what beauty I can in the debris of excruciating loss. My writing. Her writing. Wildflowers and the wilds. My raw and unedited offerings to my great love.

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My daughter has left this world. Onto another. My writing. Her writing. Wildflowers and the wilds. My raw and unedited offerings to my great love.