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Debbie Soroczan's avatar

When you call the policemen to do a wellness check and you’re standing at your daughter’s unanswered door, and they’re explaining to you in hushed tones how they’re going to grab her and sit her down so she doesn’t do anything rash once the super arrives with the key, and you know deep in your bones that that’s not what’s going to happen but you play along with the charade in supreme denial, nodding your understanding, and then they go in into …. Silence…..

It’s hell on earth.

There aren’t enough hugs or flowers on earth to send you, Tara. Just the love from my own broken heart. 💔♥️

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Elizabeth's avatar

So much love to you too, Debbie.

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Tara's avatar

It is hell on earth. That's exactly what it is. I am so sorry, Debbie. All of my love to your broken heart from what remains of mine. ❤️

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Elizabeth's avatar

Oh, Tara. ❤️ I will never understand how our hearts and lungs can keep working after the death of a child.

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Tara's avatar

Neither will I. Some days, it feels like a betrayal, other moments, a gift. I've not decided on which one. You?

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Tara's avatar

I meant the working lungs, not the death of our children. I hope that was obvious.

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Elizabeth's avatar

Both, for me.

My living children are an undeserved grace and give me reasons to do better and be better every day. There is so much beauty in the world that still stokes wonder, and awe, and love. But also sometimes, being alive while she is not, feels like a penitential sentence to be endured. An endless mea culpa, crawling along on my knees towards an absolution that will never come. How could it? I am her mother and I should have known.

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Tara's avatar

What a beautiful way to express that existence. I don't know if I will ever see her absence as a gift in any possible way. Maybe "gift" is just the wrong word for me. I agree, there is so much beauty in the world, even still. But it was there for me before, too, and I see it no more richer than I ever did. No, no absolution to come. That's the truth of it. But there has to be something softer, some diluted version thereof?

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Elizabeth's avatar

I came back to clarify the same thing. I will never, never, never accept that there is any purpose or meaning in the death of our children. Perhaps it is simply a personal failing, a lack of faith, a stubborn refusal to acknowledge any good in the loss of their lives.

But I do believe that being alive is a gift, even if I don’t always feel that way. Evelyn died nine years ago, so I have had a lot of space for my grief to change and grow. Sara Groves does a much better job of describing what I’m trying to say in the lyrics of her song « Less Like Scars ».

It's been a hard year

But I'm climbing out of the rubble

These lessons are hard

Healing changes are subtle

But every day it's

Less like tearing, more like building

Less like captive, more like willing

Less like breakdown, more like surrender

Less like haunting, more like remember

And I feel you here

And you're picking up the pieces

Forever faithful

It seemed out of my hands, a bad situation

But you are able

And in your hands the pain and hurt

Look less like scars and more like character

Less like a prison, more like my room

It's less like a casket, more like a womb

Less like dying, more like transcending

Less like fear, less like an ending

And I feel you here

And you're picking up the pieces

Forever faithful

It seemed out of my hands, a bad situation

But you are able

And in your hands the pain and hurt

Look less like scars

Just a little while ago

I couldn't feel the power or the hope

I couldn't cope, I couldn't feel a thing

Just a little while back

I was desperate, broken, laid out, hoping

You would come

And I need you

And I want you here

And I feel you

And I know you're here

And you're picking up the pieces

Forever faithful

It seemed out of my hands, a bad, bad situation

But you are able

And in your hands the pain and hurt

Look less like scars [Repeat x3]

And more like character

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Tara's avatar

That's incredibly beautiful. Thank you for sharing it, Elizabeth. ❤️

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Shirley Whitaker's avatar

Horror of horrors. Incomprehensible devastation. Bitterest tears.

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Tim Wheeler's avatar

Word to rend any human heart - I'm so sorry Tara.

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Mariah Bragg's avatar

You have hewn beauty from heartbreak. Thank you for sharing it.

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