Marine

Joel and I were recalling a time about a month after Maura's death. It was a good 90+ degrees, a hot a humid Houston summer day. And the air conditioning was broken.  Walking up the path to our front door was a United States Marine in full dress blues. Is that what the fancy uniform is called? He looked impressive, almost regal. When we answered the doorbell, I recognized him: Michael, a boy I hadn't seen since he was in middle school. Maura had a crush on him when she was in sixth grade. He played the Wizard to her Wicked Witch of the West in the school play.

We laughed a lot when she got that part. Type casting? No, but she must have shown them that she could cackle. She came home crying the day that the cast list was posted. I tried to console her, knowing that sixth-graders rarely got cast in the play. She sobbed and sobbed, unable to speak. 
I asked, knowing the answer already, "You didn't get a part in the play?"
"Yes, I did," she managed to blurt out, "I'm the Wicked Witch of the West." Giant sob.
What? I was confused. Was she sad because she was cast as the witch? It's a great part, but maybe she wanted to be somebody prettier?"
"Are you upset that you got cast as the witch?"
She stopped crying for a nano-second to give me that wonderful look of sheer disgust that I could be so stupid.
(I did not see the look again until she was in 8th grade, when it became her constant companion for a year.) Then, the floodwaters again. "So-and-so was mean to me on the bus."
This is what parents are good at: laughing on the inside, while maintaining a sympathetic tone on the outside.
What followed was an awesome discussion about not letting others rob you of your joy, one parental talk that she listened to and obviously put into practice.

Eleven years later, the Wizard, disguised as a grown-up marine, came to pay his respects. He brought flowers and apologized for missing the funeral, but he was stationed in California and couldn't get back until now. I was a lousy hostess, still very much out of my mind. He was obviously uncomfortable from the heat inside my house, but I think he had to ask for water because I forgot to offer him anything. His uniform looked heavy. Someone ran for the small fan and aimed it directly on him.  We spoke of his future and Maura's past.
A good visit.

Blue

I suppose it's inevitable. The bloggers I follow are mostly people fighting cancer of various kinds.
One of them just found out she has mets in the brain.
Another one died this week.
Both of them have inspired others with their words.
I admire them.
I will miss Daria.
Please pray for Sue.

Dear Friend,

First, never ever ever apologize for writing to me. You are right: I DO get it. I'm one of the few people you know who truly gets it. I reached out to you last fall because I knew you needed someone like me and, frankly, I need you, too.  It's true that I've lived this longer than you have, but so what? My support group leader has been living this new reality for seven years, and she still needs someone like me, too. Just like I need her. And, btw, she is very emotionally healthy now.
And, someday, you will, unfortunately, have the opportunity to be there for someone else who will join "the wretched club." It will be a tremendous blessing to you.

I know I've said this to you before: everything you are feeling , I have felt (feel still, sometimes or lots of times): the devastating loss, the agonizing , hard-to-breathe heartbreak, the absolute hopelessness and searing pain. Agghh! It's horrible and awful and so incredibly hard to think it could ever get easier.

Forget the idea of moving forward. I think it's a bad phrase because we don't EVER want to move forward if that means moving AWAY from our daughters. So, leave that phrase to the blessedly ignorant. I haven't come up with a great substitute phrase, but it needs to be one that doesn't involve going away, although I like the whole journey imagery. Maybe think of it as adjusting, learning to live in your new reality. I'm still working on the perfect sentence. When I find it, let's market it and make a fortune!

Do not hide her pictures or nick knacks. Do not avoid her friends. Do not avoid talking about her. Do not forbid the mention of her name. That doesn't mean that you can't postpone talking about her if it makes you uncomfortable. Some people you can cry in front of, others, not so much. And some days you don't feel like you can handle the tears, so it's okay to avoid and postpone.  Example: Lydia brought me the DVD of the play that she wrote and performed about Maura. I did not watch it while she was in town, nor did I watch it with Joel or Danielle. I watched it by myself just this Sunday. I thought I might prefer to cry by myself, without having anyone check on me or worry about me. And I knew that I might want to wail a bit; yes, wail...loudly. So, I just needed to be alone.

I'm not trained, so I don't want to say yes or no to you being clinically depressed. Please consult a qualified physician.

But, regular depressed? Heck, yeah. It's called "sadness."  You are very, very sad. And it's normal. It's an emotion that God invented. And deep sadness proves that we have loved deeply.
I think that after a year you might be able to look back and see that the pain has shifted to where it's not right on top of your heart so much.
I know you don't want to feel the pain, and I can promise that it will get better. It will get better. It will get better.
Here is my prescription:
Go out, even when you don't feel like it.
Don't expect to feel better when you do. You might, but  probably not.
Go grocery shopping, even if you just push the cart.
Walk around the block.
Put gas in the car.
Go to your daughter's house. 
Go out to lunch.
Go to church, but sit in the back.
Rake a few leaves...not many...in the front yard.
The trick is to push yourself to go out, but not to have any expectations of feeling any better.
The triumph is simply to get out of the house and within 10-50 feet of another human being not closely related to you.
Eventually, you'll get stronger, but you won't notice it for a long time.

The what-ifs can be devastating. It's hard not to fall into that trap. Every time I start to wonder about her medical treatment, Joel reminds me, "No more pain." he's right. Anything else would have prolonged her suffering. God didn't need one more radical treatment to cure her. He could have done so on Day 1. Or Day 301. That brings up another source of pain: why didn't He? I honestly don't have an answer for that, or, better said, I don't have an answer that is good enough. None of the answers I've come up with, or the ones that others have kindly bestowed upon me are good enough. Duh. Because nothing I can imagine can justify God not wanting my daughter to live here on this earth with me. Nothing. And I fruitlessly keep trying to imagine what could. That's where faith really helps. Or is it hope? Or both. In either case, most of the time, I'm okay with waiting until Eternity to find out the answer. I suppose by that time, it won't matter anymore. (Hope involves waiting...that's always easier to understand in Spanish and Portuguese since the two words are one and the same)

And remember that happiness and sadness co-exist.