The other day I was sitting in the barn petting the two new little twin heifers we had here a couple of weeks ago. Did you see them? Were you there? What a comfort it must be to have a twin to sleep against and play with. We named them Honey and Greta. What do you think? Well, anyway, I was in the barn, sitting on a bag of wood shavings and just scratching their funny little underbite chins. The wind was moving through the rickety old barn boards and the sun was streaming in through the window. Everything was slow and still and sweet smelling. Then I hear you, clear as day in the sing-song voice you use to call your cats, “Toooo-key”. What were you doing with Toque? Do you visit your cats often? Can they see you or are they just better at sensing you?
They follow me around now, all of your barn cats. Even Lucy lets me pet her pregnant little body. The ginger boys, Paco and Fidel, tolerate each other if it means getting affection from me. I can feel you around them somehow. Not tangible, more like a wind that’s crossed over the tips of their fur. Like that. I ask them about you, but they don’t answer. Cats keep their secrets.
I find myself, now, getting torn into different directions. Some of the people that we once thought were friends, and even family members, struggle to navigate our relationship now, in this ‘after’. Many have shut off and shut down. Some call for “closure” - a bullshit term meant to shut people up. Others just stopped coming around altogether. We strive to not judge their absence as evidence of their lack of care. People form defences and justify them in a myriad of ways. Still, our wherewithal is just too sparse to put much into having understanding for them. The best we can do is more deeply appreciate those that have come through, that continue to check in, that offer to sit with us and listen, to just hold space for our raw pain. What courage that takes.
I feel so protective of you, of our precious hold on your memory. I cannot bear to have anyone or anything threaten it. I want to hear your name out loud - what a gift to hear your name! When people share with us stories of you - oh my word, what elation! To hear of something you did or said, something I didn’t know before, is such a dripping, delicious gift. I just want more. Tell me more! “She was alive and she was here and you saw it, too!”
But right now, as I sit in this small corner of our kitchen, with my candle burning beside me, coffee cup now empty, I can remember vividly last winter. Actually, let’s go to the winter before. You will be coming down the stairs any moment now, heading to the bathroom. I will listen for your footsteps on the creaky floor. You will probably still be groggy from sleep and not say much. You will squeeze up beside me and pull out your charm to warm me up to your request for a small cup of “coffee-fey”. Probably not a good idea, but I will oblige, filling your little Ziggy cup, the one that says “I like a little coffee with my cream”, stir in some wild mushroom powder and hand it over, just to see that hundred kilowatt smile. You bring it back up into your room, sipping it while you get ready for your day. Normal. Routine. Expected.
Or is it not that time? Are things different? Do we hear those same footsteps coming down the stairs, only now it’s this past winter? You stopped with the occasional cream-with-a-little-coffee treats. You were still sleepy and grumpy. Rushed sometimes, if you had school. Covid meant you didn’t have school a lot of the time. Then you’d just sleep in until I insisted the day would wait no longer. What we didn’t know is that you weren’t sleeping much at all.
My darling, you must have felt so awful. How you mustered yourself in the quagmire you found yourself in is such a testament to your tenacity. You could make things happen. That was you. That you couldn’t find your way out in the end is demonstrative of the nuclear power of your wicked foe. My beautiful girl, my baby, my fierce competitor, stuck in a hijacked body and mind. You would have never tolerated such a thing.
Oh my love. My love.
My love.
I love you beyond measure,
MamaBear