Talisman

The day that we arrived at Children’s Hospital, my younger sister gave me one of the socks that Lizzy had been wearing that morning to hold and stroke since I could no longer touch my baby, who had been surrounded by teams of medical professionals all day. That little sock was what I had of her throughout the week at Children’s; I had one and my younger sister had the other.

When I arrived home after Lizzy’s passing, each dragging step was living torture. I could see and feel my baby at every turn, everywhere I looked, and it was like breathing daggers, so difficult was it to consume oxygen between my sobs. My family walked with me through the house, trying to offer comfort with their silent presence when no comfort could be given.

My bedroom was by far the worst. Lizzy is in every molecule of that room. Every single thing that I turned my eyes on was rife with my baby who had been impossibly and forever taken from me. There was nothing in that room that did not contain Lizzy, and I turned my head from view to view, absorbing the emotional abuse that simply walking into my bedroom had now become. It happened in slow motion and it happened like it was happening to someone else. I heard my voice alternating between low, animal cries of suffering and a high-pitched keening that continued and continued until I ran out of breath and it would begin all over again. I kept repeating endlessly, meaninglessly, “My baby….my baby…”

My baby was gone. I remember picking up her pink, toddler toothbrush. Lizzy absolutely loved brushing her teeth. I saw the step stool in our bathroom that she used to wash her hands and brush her teeth or help me clean. In the tub were her bath toys. On the counter was the Peter Rabbit plant pot that Lizzy decided one day to carry around with her wherever she went. I saw her opening the bathroom cabinets endlessly until I finally put child locks on them. I saw her helping me empty the dustpan into the bathroom trash after she had helped me sweep. I saw her taking Kleenex from the Kleenex box that she knew she was not supposed to touch and then offering me the Kleenex to make up for her transgression. I saw her in her Winnie the Pooh nightgown, tiny fists rubbing her eyes, as she followed me into the dark bathroom in the middle of the night when I needed to pee. I felt her perched on my lap, in my arms, because she could not bear such distance between us even when she was half-asleep.

I picked up her toothbrush and carried it with me, compulsively stroking the smooth handle.

In our room, her little alcove with her desk was the worst. I saw her sitting in her little chair coloring or organizing her toys. Her play pink stroller was there, with the Sheep in a Jeep book and her St. Patrick’s Day beanie bear still strapped in where she had secured them. My jar full of highlighters that I had let her play with still contained the layer of crayons she had industriously put in the bottom when I asked her to clean up from coloring. On my bureau lay the bag of organic dried mangoes from Costco that were one of her go-to snacks. I could still hear her sweet voice asking, “Ang-yo?”

On and on it went. Hundreds, if not thousands, of memories of my baby rushed in at me in a stumbling and nonsensical profusion. It was all I could do to keep breathing through my crying and survive the onslaught. The pain cut and cut like a blade that was so fine and so sharp that you don’t realize it is carving spiderwebs on your skin until the blood is running down your legs and pooling at your feet.

Some things were different as well. My older sister and my mother had cleaned up the remnants of Lizzy’s illness and the smell of her being sick had been cleared from the room. The diaper pail containing the last diaper I ever changed was gone, as was the hamper that contained all of her dirty toddler clothes. The fever-breaking medicine I had attempted to get her to take was gone. So was her water bottle, an aqua-colored Yeti engraved with a seahorse and the name “Lizzy Lou” that I had gotten her for her birthday twenty days earlier. I had gotten it to match her aunt’s Yeti, which she had been obsessed with drinking from. It was gone now because my older sister had cleaned it and taken it to her room as her own Lizzy talisman.

Exhausted, depleted, and feeling as though there was no possible way to survive this loss, I sat on the bed that had so recently been our bed. And I gathered to myself my own talismans. I picked up her very first baby blanket, an organic, un-dyed soft wool blanket, cream-colored, and large enough that she still used it as a toddler. I also asked for and was given her amber teething necklace, which she had worn every day since I first bought it for her around eight months of age. My older sister had taken it off of Lizzy at the emergency room and put it in her purse.

For the next month, I slept with, ate with, and walked around with Lizzy’s blanket and necklace. It went with me to her funeral and her burial. I held it during the day and sobbed into at night. They were the closest connections I had to her, and I would not separated from them.

When Cecilia was born, I started using Lizzy’s blanket for Cecilia. Lizzy’s necklace now rests above my head as I sleep until the day that Cecilia is old enough to wear it. I still kiss it every day.

I like to think that these things will one day help Cecilia connect with the big sister that she never got to meet. I like to think that Cecilia will use them, that they will touch her as they once touched the vibrant little life that came before her. And I like to think that their proximity helps keep Lizzy close to us in whatever form she takes now, be it angel or saint.

I do not profess to know a lot about talismans or really any objects that claim they hold some sort of power. But I do know that there were nights in the first month after Lizzy’s death where her blanket and her necklace were all the stood between me and a darkness that threatened to swallow me whole. And it made sense to me in that darkness that a being such as Lizzy, who was pure light, could infuse objects on her or around her with her own innocent radiance.

It is not lost on me that Cecilia herself is a new little radiance, nor do I not realize that Cecilia and Lizzy are all that stands between me and a despair that would most certainly take my life. I pray daily that I will not just use the light and strength of my daughters as beacons to prevent the dark from engulfing me, but that one day, I will learn enough from them to nurture my own light, so that, when the end finally comes, I can die as the mother they deserve and not just the mother I wish I could be.