I didn’t sleep last night. Not last night. Just like three years ago. I’m wearing the same blue night shirt, laying on the same pillows, thinking about the same things. I wasn’t surprised when the bright sunlight came in through the curtains, telling me that the dawn had come. The snow clouds soon choked out the sun, casting a haze over the sky. The snow storm is more than ten hours away, but the clouds have completely covered the sky.
I think back on the night, three years ago, and the tears don’t even come. As hard as I try, I am jaded from the scene. I cannot cry about it anymore. I’ve exhausted all angles of what happened three years ago, and I can no longer find myself guilty of anything wrong. There is no reason for my sorrow. There is no reason for my tears. So why couldn’t I sleep last night? Were the ghosts of one of a thousand regrets walking the halls, scratching on the door to the bedroom? What did they want? The answers?
I am tired now. I think sleep will come. I have my morning meds to take, and then it’s off to bed, to sleep away the day. Sleep like I did three years ago. I have forgiven myself, so I can repeat my past. I can re-enact it every year and try to change what I do. Change the past so I’m not forced to remember how it really is. Take a few blue pills to erase the memories and numb my brain. Become a living corpse, walking the halls with those ghosts late into the night.
But I cannot lay down and sleep.
I don’t deserve to sleep.
No matter how many of those blue pills I take, I cannot erase the memories I want erased. They pick and choose what parts of my brain that are permanently gone, and I have no choice in the matter, except the choice to take the pills. Those memories I want gone haunt me. Perhaps they are the ghosts that keep me awake at night?
The most haunting is what she did and said before she died. What my little PoRo said to me before she died. When she became sick with cancer the first time, she was happy. She said cancer was nothing and when she got well we could be a family again. Momma wouldn’t cry anymore and daddy wouldn’t be ‘away’ as much anymore. She got well. Then she relapsed almost a year ago. This time it was different. She was sad before we even took her to the doctor. Before the diagnosis ever came. After the diagnosis, I asked her why she was sad. Surely a second battle with cancer wouldn’t scare her.
What she said made my heart ice over… “Momma…I’m not going to make it this time. I’m going to die, and there’s no Rainbow Bridge, there’s no misty field surrounded by mountains where we play while we wait for you and daddy to come. When I die, I’m going to be gone forever, and I’ll never see you or daddy or anyone ever again and they’ll never see me again.”
Those words hit hard when I woke to the silent house, when PoRo was gone forever. “…I’m gone forever and I’ll never see you again…and you’ll never see me again…”
Those words don’t bring tears to my eyes. Am I immune? Has my soul dissolved in a beaker of acid? Or will they just scratch at my door late at night on the eve of December 28th, 2010?
Over Christmas, I visited PoRo’s grave. I brought her blue flowers. She loved blue flowers, though blue wasn’t her favourite colour. Her grave was decorated. Kids from her class had been by to leave stuffed animals, letters, someone had left her a can of Pepsi, propped against the cold, icy marble stone which bears her name, the dates, and her favourite Lord Byron lines. I knelt down in the snow, the coldness immediately radiated up my knees and through my shins and legs. I brushed some snow aside and laid the flowers on the slushy ground at the foot of the stone. “Merry Christmas, PoRo…Where ever you may be. Momma still loves you,” I whispered. Her daddy approached me from behind and told me it was time to go. I wasn’t wearing a coat, I wasn’t wearing gloves, I had walked most of the way there, in crocs, no socks, the snow had soaked the legs of my jeans through. How long had I been kneeling there? I don’t remember the walk back to his car. I don’t remember what he replied to me when I asked why he didn’t bring his little girl something. A blanket, a stuffed animal, didn’t he know she was probably cold and scared down in that dark grave covered with snow?
I recovered, eventually. I slept for a few hours. When I woke up, I played with my Christmas gifts. I ate candy. I frolicked in the snow with what’s left of my family. But the ghosts returned. PoRo hasn’t even been dead a year, but she has joined the ghosts that haunt me on this eve, and forever will.
All I Want For Christmas
Any time in the next couple of days little James can be coming home. I’m super excited about it. Our family will be complete again. 
James had his surgery and he pulled through ok. He’s responsive now.
With all that has come into light, my husband and I have decided to do our Christmas shopping either online or through mail order. That kind of disappoints me because this time of year is all about the lights for me. I love going out to see the Christmas lights and the stores decorated for the season. A small pang came back when I got an email from American Girl reminding me to order the Girl of the Year doll for Pogo. I teared up as I deleted the email. Unless they can send dolls to Heaven, I won’t be ordering it this year.
My husband thinks that by ordering through the mail, I will save some pain of having to walk around the stores. My pain isn’t really that bad right now. I still take pain management pills at night so that I can heal. Constantly tossing and turning prevents your body from properly healing, so you might still be in pain the next day. I really do like walking around and looking at the decorations and all the joy that is out there this time of the year. I’m going to miss that. I’m going to miss just driving around at night and looking at all the lights. We’re still going to the Winter Lights Festival this year, and we’re still going to drive around on the Tour of Lights, so it will all be ok.
All I want this year is for my family to be safe and sound and for us to have many more Christmases together. For the emotional and physical pain to stop. For things to be a little brighter. I love this time of year, it’s the time when miracles happen. It’s time for a miracle to happen.
The Most Wonderful Time of The Year
They’re playing the continuous Christmas Songs already. It isn’t even Halloween night, yet, and the Christmas songs are filling the air tonight. I have to admit, it made me feel warm and happy all over again. I mean, they used to start the Christmas songs on Thanksgiving night, but playing them now? That’s even better! For the last five years I’ve always looked forward to this time of the year. There’s always something magical and innocent at Christmastime.
Shortly after the happiness of Christmas came, I was overwhelmed with sadness. This will be the first Christmas in a long time that we’ll be going through without our daughter here. Without the happiness and joy she brought us every year. She wasn’t a given. She was a gift. I wondered what she would have asked for Christmas this year. The American Girl Doll of The Year? Last year she wanted to shadow mommy so badly she asked for an iPod and a nose piercing. I remember her first Christmas. I was playing in the college concert band and I had a solo. I remember seeing her perched on my mom’s lap, holding a candy cane and smiling at me. She was only 10 months old, but she knew who I was.
The Christmases after that seemed to fly by. Just ten short years later, I am planning to leave a bouquet of blue roses on her grave on Christmas Day. It shouldn’t have to be this way.
27 If…
The premiere was wonderful. Several of the actors remembered me, and the few that didn’t remember me on the spot remembered me as soon as I mentioned things we’d talked about last year. Yes, I had a little too much to drink, laughed a little too loudly, and partied a little too hard. But I ate food, I looked good the entire time, and now I’m just waiting for the hot water heater to warm up another batch of water so I can take a bath and wash the fun off me. The plane ride to and from was pretty boring. I slept most of the time, and scribbled in my journal. I wanted to update Twitter, but there was no internet on the plane.
I had a little bit of alone time, and I cleaned up my sites a little. I got the side bars on this page to actually look good. It looks pretty clean and neat now! Even in page mode, it looks nice. I managed to tweet a few times from the dinner hall. One of the actors who remembered me from last year kept making sexual innuendos at me. Finally, the other actor sitting next to him nudged him and said, “At least pretend you have some respect for her. Her husband is sitting right next to her.” I had to smile at that.
Yes, I played around in Las Vegas. I know if I lived on the Pacific coast, I’d always be pregnant. For you see, my husband and I constantly have unprotected sex. It’s his God’s way of having fun without sinning. However, I’ve only managed to get pregnant three times, not counting the time I got pregnant last year and had to lose the baby. Every single time I have unprotected sex on the west coast, I get pregnant. Someone told me that’s because I’m closer to the sun or the pull of the ocean or something. I doubt it.
Matt screwed up watching the kids while my husband and I were in Las Vegas. He fell asleep on our bed with a bottle of red wine and it spilled onto the white quilt. So he did the intelligent thing and washed the quilt with pure chlorine bleach and a bottle of ammonia and the Haz-Mat team showed up last night. Good thing I wasn’t home! Dennis says we’re going to get a new quilt, because on top of Matt making mustard gas, he ruined the quilt. It’s all a smudged mess.
Yesterday was Rachel’s birthday. 27 if…
Visit her.
When I came home in between classes today, the sun was shining brightly in the sky. There wasn’t a cloud in sight. I remember I checked the weather on my iPhone and it said it was raining out right then. I giggled and put the phone away before going inside. I found Dennis and Chloe in the girls’ room, Dennis was going through some of Pogo’s things and sorting them into a cardboard box and a trash bag. I didn’t have to wonder what he was doing. It was something we talked about doing all summer long, and now he had started without me.
I know why.
I was holding onto Pogo’s things. It was unhealthy. I remember a week after her funeral, I washed all of her dirty laundry and made her bed with clean sheets. I even folded up her night shirt and put it in her dresser drawer.
I knew this was something that had to be done. We can’t hold onto these things forever. She’s not going to come back from Heaven and want to play with her dolls again, sleep in her bed, read her books, watch her DVDs or write in her journal anymore. Holding onto those things was selfish. We’re keeping the pictures, the journal, some of her toys. But the bedding, the stuffed animals, the un-used school supplies, the clothes, they’re all being donated to needy kids. Stuff that’s been used that can’t be recycled properly (tooth brush, hair brush) are going to be thrown out.
When I went back to school, the sky was cloudy, as if it were going to start raining any minute.
Bender's Big Score
I tried watching Bender’s Big Score again today. I say again because I watched it the first time in May. With Pogo. It was the last movie we watched together before she died. She asked me if I could get it for her on DVD. Thanks to my online friends and friends across the T1 lines, I had a crash course in VHS to DVD rip and got it on a DVD before she died. She loved the song, 30th Century Man. The last song we downloaded together.
I can’t make it through the movie without crying. I’m constantly reminded of what I was doing four months ago when my little girl was still blessing my life. I am reminded of how good life truly was, and how I took it for granted
I’m sure this too will pass. Some day I will smile again.
Now I’m off to eat a yogurt parfait with my man. I missed having someone around to snack with.
Some day when they’re mentioned, tears won’t come to my eyes. Some day when I think of something funny they said, the sadness won’t overwhelm me. Some day when I see something they might have liked and pick up my phone to call them, I won’t have to stop and think, “Oh, they’re dead.”
Some day…
There was a rainstorm today. Just a bolt of lightening, then a squirt of rain from the clouds above. Then a downpour. Before I got home, the sun was shining on the other side of the street. I waited for the rainbow, but it never came. Aren’t rainbows supposed to come after the rain? I put up with the rain, where’s my rainbow?
My pharm 3 professor accidentally triggered me today. Stupid gas laws. Can’t the world of chemistry do with out it? Just to make room for my feelings? I didn’t start crying until after I was home. After the rain. Before the rainbow. I’m still waiting for that rainbow.
I called Matt back finally. He didn’t answer. I got his voice mail. I asked him to call me back. He hasn’t yet.
My love song came on at 6:42pm, and I cried over it too. I was tripped at school and fell into a mud puddle. I cried over that. I cried when I got to class and found all my notes were ruined by the moisture. I cried when I took my bag out of the dryer to find the mud stains baked into it.
He sang me my love song during the heaviest rain fall. By the time the song was over, the rain had let up to nearly non-existent. My heart still felt heavy, but my soul had healed.
Today was a day of tears, but it wasn’t sad. It’s one less day of tears I will have to go through. There’s always a rainbow. Even if we can’t see it after the rain.
{{Pictures}}
I still love this picture. I don’t know why:
Little plastic pig keychain I got at the career fair. They had blue and clear. I picked blue but told myself that I’d take a blue one then come back for a clear one after class. By the time class ended, the clear ones were all gone. Actually, so were all the blue ones. Live and learn.
Sun shines through the rain:
I found this while I was looking through my Flickr account for something else:
ETA: to the “person” who commented: ‘it’s been two months….dude get over it!’ I would like to point out that death is something that people just don’t ‘get over’. There is no set time for grieving and there is no set time to be ‘over’ a child’s death. I don’t think I’m supposed to be ‘over it’ in two months. My nephew has been dead nearly a year, and I still cry when I stumble upon his pictures. My brother-in-law’s mother has been dead 12 years and he still cries over her death. When you love someone, there is no limit to how long you can miss them. Especially when their deaths were caused from a terrible disease that has cursed all of human existence. Oh, and no, your ‘comment’ wasn’t approved, and signing another name to it didn’t hide who you were–I searched for your IP, and back in May you were all sympathies. It’s my blog. I will grieve as long as I want and I will blog about it as long as I want. You don’t have to read it, even if you’re just here to drop and run via EntreCard. So now I’ve banned your IP from commenting. If you want to apologise, I may unban your IP from commenting. For now you can still view my site and drop your precious EC and get that 1 credit per day you get from my blog. But I can go into mega-bitch mode and ban you all together.
Jamie aka: The being known as Wonder Girl, 30, mother of four, wife to one, she is a senior biomedicine student who is learning to fit in in the world around her. After nearly three decades on this planet, she still doesn't know where she belongs. Best friend of Matt, sarcastic, spoiled, apathetic, kutie brat, babe. Just your average woman, living in a not-so-average world, surviving by her incredible super power of being able to see right through you while
accomplishing more tasks than you ever thought imaginable. She is the being known as Wonder Girl and she is speaking, I believe. More? Aren't you brave!
