birthday moon

and thoughts on our relationship as it lives on

Mila took this picture of one of her beloved barn cats, “Fidel”.

Dear Mila on your birthday,

I wrote the following journal entry to myself, for your Papa, for whoever. Just me figuring things out on paper as my mind must do.

This morning we woke up to the most beautiful night sky we have ever witnessed. A half moon as bright as any full moon that ever shone. It lit up the whole night sky and found us through our bedroom window where it hung, directly before us. In the centre of the moon, a light halo in the shape of a cross. The wild, blowing winds covered it with rolling clouds, one after the other. But always, we knew it was there, behind it all, even when we couldn’t see it. Always, it reappeared, pulsating light.

You are mighty, my beautiful one.

Our family will play hockey today, each of us with one of your old jerseys on. We will have your favourite meal and your favourite cake. We will light candles for you and pray and weep and laugh. And later, when everyone goes home, your dad and I will go out to the forest and light a fire and look for you in the flames.

I wrote this little piece in the forest yesterday. Just me trying to understand and evolve and be present to what you are sharing with me. Thank you for the bald headed eagle the other day. What a thing.

I love you. I know you know.

Mama

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Mila’s birthday. I move into witnessing and growing with her, in a way that is foreign but not altogether so. There’s a familiarity there, but all of my senses and reason have been handicapped. There is more required of me. A faith beyond reason. Like sitting with someone under an old, craggy apple tree enjoying a cold tea together as the sun warms the top of our heads. Only my friend speaks a foreign language. The inclination is to use my physical senses to look for expressions or gestures to find meaning. I listen for tone or emphasis. Watch for delight on their lips as they sip their tea. All of it, collecting a translation as best I can. I am flesh and blood physical and spirit, both. Our bodies, our inner beings - an outrageous gift and a frustrating hobble.

I remain here, in this physical world. She has moved beyond. She is close in the presence of beauty and awe. That shows me something of where she is. What can I tell you about that knowing? Nothing. It’s is an inexplicable, overwhelming sensation that bubbles up or in from something beyond. My understanding as I continue to live in this world without my youngest daughter, is that understanding is no longer a requirement. In fact, it’s a hindrance. I can just be. I can close my eyes and drop the frantically searching and just receive. I can stop trying to figure it all out and just be with her. Not her memories, those are dormant things. Bit with her. Now. Alive. In love, today, in this moment, with my beautiful one.

It’s her birthday this day. The first in 19 years where we will not celebrate her life together. The anguish grows. How could it be any other way? I am in agony, I must feel that agony. There is no tidy way to diminish such pain and why would I ever want to? She, the physical presence of her, left a cavern so deep that it must be filled with something. 

And yet, this phenomenon of now living in a world where all seems to be reigned by madness and we are dripping in grief, she teaches me. A language I do not understand but somehow feel reverberating through my bones. A conversation so beautiful it brings me to tears without understanding a single word. Without needing to. Learning not to want to.

Another of Mila’s pictures. Her with a sleeping Fidel. She, the pied piper of barn cats.