The Aquarium
A year ago yesterday was my husband’s and my sixth anniversary, making yesterday our seventh if we were not separated. A year ago yesterday, I told him I wanted us to go to the aquarium as a family (him, me, and Lizzy) and then out to dinner afterwards. We did and had a fantastic day.
Lizzy wore a white dress with red embroidered flowers, her red baby Crocs, and a red bow over her shining, golden, fine hair that just barely covered her little head. She was delighted by the fish, the sea turtles, the sharks, and all of the colors and sounds that accompanied that day. Only 15 months old, she happily trotted through the aquarium with us, pointing and exploring, holding hands with either one of us. Towards the end of the exhibit in the main building, there are a series of ramps that take you back down from the top of the aquarium. Lizzy discovered that these ramps were an excellent acceleration ground, where she could use gravity to run downhill very fast. So I spent a laughing half hour chasing after her as she repeatedly ran down several ramps, then traveled back up them in order to do it again.
While we were walking to dinner, we came across a children’s playground and spent some time playing with the over-sized instruments there before Lizzy discovered a tunnel made out of bent branches and foliage. Giggling and delighted, she traveled through the tunnel, exploring both ends thoroughly. Eventually, I popped her in her stroller, hoping she would sleep throughout dinner, like she had the previous year on our fifth anniversary.
Instead, my little one woke up about 45 minutes into dinner, but instead of confirming my fear that she would be a nuisance and make the rest of dinner difficult, she was adorable and happily participated. We were at a Brazilian steakhouse, which is not a slow meal experience. Lizzy sat on my lap, busily chatting to us and charming the couples sitting around us. When the servers came around offering new types of meat, I selected several and Lizzy would take one chubby fistful of meat and gnaw contentedly at it for twenty or thirty minutes, commenting intermittently. She was well-behaved, content, happy, and picture-perfect. It was a wonderful day.
If I had had the power then to look into the future and see where my life would take me over the course of the next year, I think the shock and horror might have killed me. How is it possible that my vibrant, beautiful little girl is simply gone–off the face of this planet? How can it be possible that a year ago, she was speeding down those ramps at the Aquarium, looking back over her shoulder at me in that forested tunnel, trying to share her fistful of meat with me?
When I compare the pain that I thought I was feeling about the separation and impending divorce to the pain I feel now in the face of losing Lizzy, it is like a drop in the ocean. And what I mean by that is that when I was experiencing the pain of the divorce, it was like feeling a raindrop and using the word “ocean” to describe what I was feeling. Since then, since losing her, my definition of pain has been shattered and rebuilt. Now, I know what the word “ocean” means. I know what it is to be lost in it and I know what it is to be drowning in it.
From what I can understand, grief is a constant. The moment that I start to feel okay or present in any given moment, a memory of Lizzy surfaces or a thought that I should share something with her, or simply the memory that she is gone flattens me. And the next thought is invariably that I just want to die in order to be with her.
I do not know if this makes me suicidal, since I don’t think I would ever actually harm myself and since Cecilia needs me to be with her. But I do know that the meaningless behind everything that I do feels rampant. I can structure and balance my day with proper nutrition, rest, exercise, reading, writing, and prayer, and still it all feels meaningless. I do not know when or if that ever goes away. The only thing that I am sure of, in this present moment, is that nothing will ever be truly okay again.