100 Days

You’re going to wake up from your nap soon so I’m going to hop off but I will write once more before your sister gets here.  I think we’re on the right track, Lou.  I’m happier, you’re happier.  We’re settled, we’re following a routine, we’re fighting for what we believe in.  That’s what matters.  We’re together and we’re safe.  I really think we’re going to be okay.  I love you with everything that I am, beautiful girl.  I can’t wait for the life we have ahead of us. Happy Birthday, my baby.

All of my love, for all of time, Mommy 

I started writing letters to Lizzy when she was 9 months old. The above excerpt is the last paragraph of the last letter I wrote to Lizzy, ten days before she died, six days after her second birthday. I call her “Lou” because that was her most-used nickname, from her first ever nickname, “Lizzy Lou.” In the previous letter I had written her, I explained how her father and I were separated, how I was pregnant, and how she and I had moved out of our home. I spent the majority of the last letter I wrote to her assuring her that we were through the worst of it, that we were going to be okay–that we were going to be better than okay. At that time, it was hard to see past the darkness of my marriage falling apart and the loneliness of finding myself a single, pregnant mother of a two-year old. But, despite it all, I still had confidence that we were going to make it and that I could still give my girls a beautiful life–the life they deserved.

It seems to me that we tell our children many lies. We justify them as “white lies” or “being for their own good,” but in the end, that’s exactly what they are. Lies. I didn’t know that I was lying to Lizzy when I told her that we were going to be okay. But I lied to her all the same. And perhaps that’s the most common and most terrible lie: “Everything’s going to be okay.”

What sort of insane hubris makes us believe we can say something like that? In the end, we have very little control over making things okay for our children. For the most part, we spend their lives picking up the pieces after the world hurts or simply breaks them. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all of this, it’s that nothing is ever going to be truly okay again.

Today, Cecilia is exactly 10 weeks old. Today is exactly 100 days since Lizzy died. I am not sure if this is supposed to be some sort of milestone for me, but I can tell you for certain that it doesn’t feel like one. There is the same dull agony, the same gripping of the invisible hand, the same drudgery of minute after minute without the daughter I still feel is supposed to be here.

If anything has been highlighted to me on this day, it is that human beings have the ability to endure and become accustomed to the horrific–so accustomed that the horror, though palpably present, is almost like white noise to the soundtrack of life. I have written before about the phenomenon of human adaptability to horror, but today, I can hardly stop thinking about it.

I’m not sure how to explain my life as it stands now to people. Not that many are asking. I’m even less sure of how to identify or explain myself. The only thing that makes sense to say is that I’m a mother. Single mother? Bereaved mother? Newly postpartum mother? I am all of these things, but the thing that I feel still identifies me most is “Lizzy’s mother.”

The problem is that “Lizzy’s mother” now more accurately means “mother of a dead toddler.” And the problem also is that “Cecilia’s mother” now more accurately means “mother of a newborn.” And this is the identity crisis that I find colors each of the 100 days that has passed since Lizzy died: how do I mother both the dead and the living?

I do have clarity on one front though. I feel that I am supposed to memorialize Lizzy. I need to tell the world how much I loved her and how desperate I am without her. I want to share my story–not even with people that I know, but with strangers. I want them to know how much her little life mattered, even though she only got to live it for two years. So I think I’ll write a book about her. I’ll tell her story, and let people find out for themselves how much she mattered.

Since she died, I have been struggling with how to mother Lizzy, now that she is no longer here. I do not know if writing a book about her is the answer, but I think it is at least part of it. And maybe I’ll let that be enough for today.