Dear Mila,
Even typing your name brings tears to my eyes. Do you still have a name? I still have a name for you. Mila, beloved by all - that’s what the baby name book said and ultimately what came to be.
Mila, beloved by all, us most of all.
I’m sitting on my bedroom floor, taking a break from making butter. The old pink fridge and the sleek new one were both bursting with milk jars after a week of milking with little drinking. It was now or never, the butter has to be made before the cream turns. Remember when you helped me with that? You of the mighty churning muscles. Always turning things into a competition with your beloved papa. Even butter making was a test of skills.
I don’t know what I would do if there was no butter that had to be made. I guess I wouldn’t get out of bed. The thought of it both terrifies and beckons me. What a dance we are doing, to allow ourselves to swim in this endless sea of grief without diversion, but still tending to the life that lives. Farm chores are both drill sergeant and comforting habit. If we do not water and feed and move and care for the animals, they die. We must carry that responsibility despite our all-consuming grief.
My god I miss you, Mila. Such a gnawing hole chewing at me from the inside out. This heavy tar sticking to ripped out edges. Where is my daughter? Where are you now? Is there a now? Can you feel our love? Can you feel our pain? Does my pain hurt you? Can you bear it? Can we bear it together?
We celebrated your graduation two days ago but you must already know that. Dad and I receiving your certificate and listening to the words you wrote for us while the wind blew the waves of the lake behind us, the same lake that drank your life away. It was excruciating, but we had to go. How could we not be there on your behalf? How could we not look those two young women in the eyes, the ones that were awarded scholarships in your name? We had to do it. Life requires tending.
I’m still sitting on the floor. Everything in me screams to peel up the floorboards and wedge myself in the in-between-ness of life, not our bedroom, not the kitchen below. Just in-between. Is that where I’d find you? Not life, not death? That’s where I want to be. Not fully here meeting the world that asks me to show that I’m alive, but not into death either because what would be of your sisters and your dad if we both left? I just want to be somewhere outside of both. Nowhere.
Life and people pull us in, a great vortex insisting on our participation. It takes will and determination to stay on the margins of slowness and contemplation. I feel closest to you there, in that silence and awareness. And you, you need space and time to infiltrate the hard physicality of this world while learning of your new. I hear you. I can feel you.
Do you have peace where you are? I have no peace. I have indescribable pain. My baby is gone. People say we were good parents and sometimes I think that’s true, but really, there is a twisted knot in the core of my guts that says different. As much as words and accolades fall, the proof is in your absence. We are the living so we must pretend that it isn’t so, but truth be told… well, you are the truth that told. For my myriad of failings, my beautiful one, I offer my everlasting apologies carved into the open palm of my hands. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I could have and should have and would have and mother fucker what the hell was I doing??!
And the raven with his talons tangled in my hair whispers “nevermore”. Just like you showed me.
My beauty. My lovely. My little girl in a big girl’s body skating backwards, taking on a rushing boy, timing yourself patiently to stop him. You were fierce and courageous. Why could you not muster that enough, just enough to talk to your dad and me about what was going on in your life? To your sisters, even? Did you not see how flawed and fucked up we were, too? Why could you not accept that from yourself?
You were a wonder, and wonder is not tarnished by dents and imperfections, it only makes it that much more whole and real. Real, Mila. Real Mila. You could have laid it all out on us and we would have taken every last crumb and remained steadfast in our love and dedication to you. That part is on you. We both have to carry our load.
But enough of that. Come home, please. Come, now. Just walk through the door, walk up the stairs - I’m listening now but can’t hear the creak of your feet on the stairs. Maybe you’re walking on the outer edges of each step, like you did when you woke up early so that you didn’t wake us, so we wouldn’t hear the groans of that ancient staircase. Yes?
So, now then, come now. All will be forgiven. No grudge to massage, just love, unabashed love poured onto you from our every jubilant pore. Love and love all over you, dripping and pouring in pools around your sweet, crooked toes. Your hair wet with it. Drips falling from your fingertips and clinging to your eyelashes. Luminescent, pearly love and you laughing with the enormity of it all. Deal?
Please?
Come now. I can’t last another minute.
Dear Tara,
I've been thinking and thinking and thinking, and writing and deleting, writing and deleting. But I'm not a writer. I can never fully explain my thoughts in words. I'm frustrated my inability to choose the right words to describe precise feelings. Most of the time, that's okay. I'm happy to be able to read the writings of people who do have that gift. You are one of those writers who make me answer your essays out loud, shouting "Yes! Exactly! That's what I WISH I had the words to say! Thank for saying what I couldn't in such an eloquent way. Thank you for making me feel less alone in my thoughts." I've missed your writing so very much over the past year. But since reading about Mila's death, I've felt compelled to figure out a way to write something, anything, because I can't cross the border into my own goddamn country, and drive to your farm and find you in the woods, lay prostrate at your altar next to you and let all the tears flow into the earth until we are both too exhausted to continue for the moment. I'd sit on the ground next to you, pour a warm mug of tea, and listen to everything you'd be gracious enough to share about Mila and yourself. I'd be there for it all.
But then, it would never be enough. Just a tiny little grain of comfort, utterly insubstantial to face the mighty power of an ocean of grief. So I'd do it again and again. Until there was a little pile of comforting sand that lasted through the storm and remained on the beach after the waves receded. You could sift it through your hand as you sat there catching your breath.
They do, you know. Recede. Those giant waves of grief crashing over you again and again so that you struggle to keep your head above water and gasp for breath and scramble wildly for the surface. Sometimes you don't want the storm to ever stop raging, because it feels like that is where you are closest to them.
I'm struggling with what I've written so far and all the rest of what I want to share with you. I want to delete the part where I make myself out to be a stalker and invader of privacy (I swear I'd dither on the edge of your property and drive away so as not to bother you). I want to share more of my own experiences in the hopes that they would make you feel less alone too. But the truth is, no one will grieve Mila's death as you will. Your pain is palpable, and I know it intimately, but your pain is not mine. I cannot bear the weight of this grief for you, anymore that I can bear Mila's struggles for her. And I would. In a heartbeat. On my life. I'd take that weight onto my shoulders and let her rest until she found the strength within her to stand back up.
For whatever it's worth, I'm here for it all too.
Much love, Elizabeth
I do not know for sure if our prayers and our tears on behalf of another can span the space of time but through mine I just prayed for the you who wrote this nearly 2 years ago and for you today. Peace + comfort.