Abigail is a gift.
She came like a shooting star, passing through the night sky of our lives, then vanishing from our view. But her beauty and the majesty of her mission stay forever in our minds.
During America's stay-at-home order for the Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic, which some people have suggested should be known as The Great Pause, many have pondered aloud about the blessings of Coronavirus. Obviously, pandemics are frightening. We worry for ourselves and our loved ones and we feel protective, isolated, and uncertain as we take steps to "flatten the curve" and mitigate the disaster suggested in the word "pandemic." However, many people have seen beauty in the sudden pause, the forced rest, the togetherness of families, the spontaneous and planned acts of charity, the productive and compassionate use of technology to connect and bring hope. It's all beautiful when you look at it that way.
How we look at things makes a big difference in the message we receive from it.
Shortly after getting out of the hospital, Bill and I watched
Jumanji II again. It was a movie we had watched twice in the theatre while I was pregnant with Abigail. The timing of the comedian/actors was impeccable and I found myself laughing through the movie both times. We bought it as soon as it came out digitally so we could watch it at home.
This time as I watched it, I tried to remember how much I had enjoyed it before, and how Abigail had kicked up a storm in my womb as I laughed and laughed. There were sweet moments in the movie, too--lessons for the characters to learn and express. Self-appreciation, the importance of leaning on your friends in your vulnerability, and forgiveness.
When I first got home from the hospital, I was relieved to be home and not in a hospital. I was happy to have access to my other children again, to comfort them and enjoy their personalities. And I was driven toward the work that had to be done for Abigail's funeral. Many of the arrangements had already been planned and prepared beforehand. The casket had been made. The funeral gown had been purchased. The burial plot was ready and waiting, and I had written my love note eulogy while still in the hospital. But there were still things to do. I focused on helping Bill to gather his thoughts for what he wanted to say, encouraging our sons to practice the song they were to sing at the funeral: "Families Can Be Together Forever." I focused on welcoming family who came from out of town to help us honor Abigail. All of this felt natural and precious and time slowed down for it.
But after the funeral, I felt physically and emotionally exhausted. It was finally time to feel the backward motion of what can best be described as emotional whiplash. Had it really happened at all? Had Abigail been born, spent her whole life on earth in one day, and gone on to heaven? Had we buried her already? All in less than one week? My head and my heart spun with the surreal speed with which the entire thing had taken place. Time is a luxury we take for granted.
Now that Abigail was gone, I didn't want time. It seemed to stretch out in front of me for miles with no rest stops, an unending march toward my own death so far in the distance. I just wanted to crawl into that hole with Abigail and be buried, too. The fact that I had died, that my heart had stopped, actually gave me a worse case of survivor's guilt. Why was this sweet spirit gone and my crotchety old self still here? I'm 36 years old, but I feel ancient. Life has been incredibly long and more painful than I ever could have imagined before living it. I felt tired. I prayed and prayed and prayed for God to help me to feel like living again. He sent me little messages, in the form of a special card written by a friend or the words to a song, the embrace of a child, the face of my husband.
I could barely pay attention to the movie as we sat on our bed watching
Jumanji II. My heart was broken and my will felt so weak. I related less to Danny Glover's cheerful, smiling character who always saw the silver lining and more to Danny DeVito's grouchy old man. His character had just undergone hip surgery and all he would say to anyone who would listen was how much getting old stank. Never get old, he advised his grandson, the main character of the film who was going through his own existential crisis.
Yeah, I thought darkly.
Never get old.
But that moment of resonance was only leading me inevitably to the moment at the end of the movie when his character arc would be complete, and when he would say the line that struck me to the core.
As he's playing a video game with his grandson, he starts the familiar phrase he's been saying through the whole movie. "Growing old..."
"Yeah, yeah, I know," his grandson interrupts. "Growing old sucks."
But no, that's not how he was going to end it this time. "Growing old," he says instead, "is a gift." Cue the twinkle in his eye. My spirit felt like a live wire inside me, and I knew God was watching me watch this movie and putting that scene in my path so I would experience this moment.
I knew it was wisdom. And I knew, of course, that life was a gift from our Heavenly Parents to us. It just didn't feel like one anymore. Abigail's life had been a gift. I hung onto that fact, and I added to it the message I had felt resonate in my bones: my life is a gift. Living right now is a gift.
Since then, I have continued to receive these little messages all around me, because I've been looking for them. My search for meaning intensified the day we received Abigail's original diagnosis of anencephaly on November 8, 2019. After her death on February 26, 2020, this search goes on. I am especially looking forward to the
April General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints this weekend because the words of living prophets are a bounty of little messages when you're open to receiving them.
Today, I tell people I am doing pretty well. I cry and I struggle against thoughts of worthiness and worthwhileness. I try to get back that surety that I have felt at various times in my life, the surety that allowed me to walk through the fire with Abigail in the first place. And I watch for messages from the Lord. I need them now more than ever before in my life. I need them just to get out of bed in the morning. They continue to come through my children's hugs and tears, through my husband's words and glances, through scripture, in movies and music and books, through friends and flowers, even a cloudy sky.
We are all walking forward.
Shortly after I came home from the hospital, I moved Abigail's bassinet into my bedroom, right by my side of the bed, under the window. It's where I would have put it if she had lived and we had brought her home. It's where I needed it now, even though she wasn't here anymore. I filled it with a box of 4x6 photos, mostly black and white, of Abigail's feet and hands and my children holding her, and Bill walking through the hospital with her like her sentinel in his Batman shirt.
And I filled it with baby blankets, all the ones she used in her hospital stay and the big one that had covered her throughout the night, the one my mom had crocheted just for her. On the top of the pile I put the preemie sleeper outfit that she had worn throughout that special day of being alive with us. It was a turquoise blue and said "Little Sister" in pink letters. It rested now, lifeless, on top of a swaddling blanket still stained, despite washing, from the piece of the placenta that had been her crown and constant companion in this life.
For the first week, I stopped by the bassinet before getting back in bed, and lifted the tiny outfit and blanket to my face. I tried to inhale whatever of her essence remained in the weave of the fabric. Until one day I lifted it and couldn't smell her anymore. I still looked at it, and held the big crocheted blanket my mom had made. It was almost as big as Abigail, all folded up on itself, and I held it to my chest as if it
were her.
After we planted her cherry tree, I looked out the window as I held the blanket and imagined the cherry tree in full bloom with all its temporary seasonal glory.
When my kids came to visit me in my room during my recovery, they sidled past the bassinet and tried not to bump it too much because they knew that would upset me. We had family prayers around our bed, seven people crowded around on their knees with their arms folded as we prayed together each night before bed. The bassinet made it quite crowded on my side.
I knew I couldn't keep the bassinet there forever, but I wanted her blankets and her little owl where I could reach them when I needed them. Thankfully, one night I had a stroke of inspiration. That happens often when you stay up an extra hour lying in bed without distractions. I planned it all out in my mind, and then this bench became the solution.
Before we moved, it was put outside while we tiled most of the floors in our old house. When I asked the boys to keep busy painting the table and chairs white, someone painted this bench, too. It
looked like a child had painted it. When we moved the furniture into the new house, there was no place for this window seat. The new kitchen had no outside wall and no window for a window seat. I put it outside by the grill and forgot about it. The other day I pulled out the cordless sander and did my best to add to its character, bring out some of that pretty burgundy red. My body is still very sore, so I only managed to give it a little more character, but I'm happy with my efforts. The bassinet is gone. All the blankets are in this storage bench, and the owl sits on top.
This will be a good place to sit and watch the cherry tree in bloom.
I sent the picture of the bench to my mom and sisters. My mom said, "You're not forgetting, just moving forward." That is right.
*sigh*
This is hard but necessary.
Abigail has been gone a month. I don't think I will ever get over it. But I am getting through it. We all are.
Last week, Bill and I pulled out another favorite movie,
Collateral Beauty. I had been afraid to watch it because Will Smith's main character is a man who recently lost his six-year-old daughter to a rare disease.
It hits so close to home, but I needed to watch it again. His journey to acceptance involves writing letters to the three abstractions: Time, Love, and Death. So many of the things he writes to them are poetic versions of my own grief-stricken thoughts. In the case of this film, the title is the lesson, but the audience goes on the same journey as the main character to accept it--because at first it sounds like fluffy nonsense. The stages of grief do not often brook fluffy nonsense. We have to go through all of the main character's conversations with Time, Love, Death, and his ex-wife, before we can believe that there is any such thing as collateral beauty.
"It's there," the ex-wife promises him. And it really is. Bill and I have seen it, felt it, practically swam in it at times.
God is good all the time. There is a Divine Order, as Jeff Olsen says in his book,
Knowing. Everything is in Divine Order, though it doesn't often feel that way to us. A simple search of chaos theory on the internet tells us how much we don't know about the way nature functions. What looks like chaos is actually order, and it is designed.
Whatever you're going through, I hope this can be one of your messages for the moment you need it. You are known and loved, cherished even. The way we cherish Abigail times infinity.
God not only loves us each profoundly, but there is a plan for our ultimate happiness. It can't be seen in intricate detail because the future is to be lived moment by moment. So I try to be content with my little messages: the glass butterfly I found in Abigail's garden (or did it find me?); the March snowfall that covered everything in a silent, serene white veil; the pandemic that halted the world for my grief.
There is definitely such a thing as collateral beauty. It's the part that makes life a gift worth living.
