come back

poe misheard, it was "evermore"

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.