Hello, darling. It's late at night, on a Monday in November, 2012. You are slumbering away, in what I hope, are sweet and peace filled dreams. I am just now, finding space in my heart to devote words, now and again, to nothing but you. I had intended on writing to you in this fashion, from the time that you were born. I originally started with old fashioned pen and paper. That was so very short lived. I have a tendency to freeze on paper. Life became busy, Gregory arrived and live became chaotic.
Then in February, just two weeks after your seventh birthday, Gregory was diagnosed with cancer. This you already know and feel oh so acutely. It was at this point that I all but abandoned you. My physical and emotional presence in your life ceased to exist, for quite some time. It is now nearly four years since then and I am just now trying to find my way back to you. It's not been easy.
Over the years, I am hopeful that we will be able to have frank conversations about what has passed and how it still affects our relationship and the woman you will one day become. I struggle with connecting with you. You need and deserve so much more than I find myself able to offer to you. I struggle with being the mom you want me to be and being the mom that I am. I sometimes feel like I fall so terribly short in your expectations.
You have a gigantic heart and free flowing, lofty dreams. I want to feed your heart and soul, but still keep you a bit grounded. There is plenty of my own baggage that comes along for the ride in our interactions. I want you to be a woman who is strong, confident, independent, loving, open, practical, with a touch of big dreams. Someone who not only follows her heart, but listens to it in the quiet moments. A woman who is not afraid to look herself in the mirror and say to her reflection: "I love you."
I wonder how the last four years have hindered that development. I wonder how I can show you that I love you. I wonder how I can offer you the security that you so desperately seek. Seven years old is such a tender age to be abandoned by your mother. It is such a young age to have your touchstone yanked from your life. Especially in a situation that pulls her to focusing 100% on your little brother.
At the risk of sounding harsh and unfeeling, I will tell you this: It was the only choice I could make. Given the same circumstance to repeat, I'd make the same choice. Even with the knowledge of hind-sight. Harsh, I know. It was not a choice that I had to ponder, either. It was visceral and innate. Gregory was facing death. You were alive and healthy. You had Daddy, Nana and Papa. Not to mention our extended Montessori community. While they are not a replacement for your mom, they were there for you in ways I could not be.
My heart and my head reasoned it through. It was better for our family for me to focus 100% on Gregory for a short time. Offering him the BEST opportunity to survive and recover. Versus a lifetime of the four of us living without him. It may not have been logical. I would like to think that my singularly focused attention to Gregory did help in his survival. The truth is, I don't know. I'm beginning to think that this way of thinking was my way of bargaining and appeasing my own guilt at having to leave you. Pleading with The Universe that if I sacrifice my relationship with you and Curtis, then we might get a chance to keep Gregory a little longer. I don't know, sweetheart. I can't look back with regret or question the decision that were made. In fact, I don't.
My biggest overriding feeling when it comes to you, is an ache tinged with grief over what we missed out on together. Half of first grade, all of second grade,a large part of third grade, most of fourth grade and now, you are in the fifth grade and I am beginning to find my way back to you.
I'm hopeful that by writing to you like this, I will also be able to talk to you now. I'm hopeful that it will enable me to be a stronger presence in your current moments. I cannot undo the past. Yet it is there between us. I can only support you now and be there for you when your heart crosses places that hurt.
When I pictured my family, I had always imagined having just one daughter. You. You are that one daughter I always wished for. Today, I only wish that the years had been easier for us. They weren't, though. We were handed this really crappy and hateful thing called childhood cancer. You suffered right along with Gregory. You and I will get through this.
Five minutes at a time.
I love you, young lady. With the fire of a million burning suns.
~Mommy
Your seventh birthday. February 5, 2009
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4 comments:
Oh such a sweet post... I hope she reads it and she understands. It might take until she has her own--to really comprehend what you've said from a mother's stand point. Maybe sooner? She is a beautiful girl!!
Cheers, Jenn
For my daughter she was 8. It was just three days before Thanksgiving and while she was away at a very normal day at school, her father died in a very fiery awful accident. Her world changed forever that afternoon. How to tell your children that their father is dead and won't be coming home tonight or ever? I was lost to myself in grief, in fear of what to do with a house half built, with only wood heat and a cabinet shop business to run when all I had ever done was the books and answering phones. So, at first they lost me to sadness, then to trying to figure out the business and run the business and re-create my life - our life. So many complications - a sick mother to care for on top of it all. It was so many years of survival. But we are close - so close in ways we otherwise never would have been. You see, she learned the essence of life very early. For months she drew yin/yang symbols on everything because she understood the light and dark already. Some things she never noticed, other things she had to forgive me for. But in the end, we still love each other fiercely even though she lives on the other side of the country and is now 30 years old. You see - LOVE speaks volumes and has room to hold it all - even forgiveness and understanding. In the bigger picture it taught her how much a human can survive and come out whole and still be able to love that fiercely. Way will come, Mindi and it will be so much deeper than it otherwise would have been.
Wow, this is such a poignant post. And I thought I had it bad with a mentally ill husband and a daughter who only knows him that way. Holy moly, lady I admire your strength. I knew there was a reason I started blogging. To find people like you. You are an inspiration.
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