The World that Remains
In the early days of my grief, back before Cecilia’s diagnosis–before I even knew she was blind–I texted my big sister that even though Cecilia wasn’t Lizzy, she was still a world unto herself, still worth dedicating my whole life and being to. It was an important emotional milestone for me and one that has anchored much of what has happened since.
I still struggle every day with the fact that Cecilia is not Lizzy. I struggle with how different they are–so different that it defies description. Lizzy had a bright mischievousness to her, while Cece is more demanding with what she wants and when she wants it. Lizzy was highly self-sufficient, while Cece needs her world to be mediated through me. Lizzy wanted to take you by the hand and go exploring while Cecilia wants to know you’re right there beside her if she falls. Lizzy was fearless, and sometimes I fear that Cecilia is afraid of too many things.
The only thing I feel is similar is the bond I share with Cecilia, and even that is radically different than what I had with Lizzy. I think Lizzy had a soul-deep knowledge of me, and it allowed us to be best friends even though she was only capable of speaking in those last few months of her life. I think Lizzy will always know me more deeply than anyone else in my life, and I am very afraid that both that knowledge and the person that she loved died with her. With Cecilia, it’s easy to argue that the bond is just as strong, but it’s a bond based almost entirely on mutual need rather than unanticipated and overabundant fulfillment.
I need Cecilia like I need water, food, and breath. And Cecilia needs me for milk, food, water, comfort, protection, and cleanliness. But I am afraid of sounding too utilitarian. The need which defines our relationship goes far deeper than mere physical survival. Since before she was even born, Cecilia has been my tether to this world, and now that she is here, growing into her own unique little self, she has become the driving force behind everything that I do.
This is my quandary: I cannot love her less than I love Lizzy. I cannot need her less. What I feel for her is as strong as what I feel for Lizzy and will last as long. But it is also different, so different that I cannot understand how or why parents tell their children that they love them all equally. Trying to quantify love is like trying to count the droplets of water that form the oceans and forgetting about the rainfall and the rivers, lakes, and streams. Love is an interconnected ecosystem that defies both mathematical precision and human logic.
There are still nights that I cry myself to sleep while visions of Lizzy dance like a hailstorm behind my eyes. There are still times when the gnawing emptiness grows upwards from my gut threatening to swallow everything it encounters. I still have nightmares about Lizzy or Cecilia dying or being murdered or sacrificed or lost or forgotten. I still think the words “peace” and “rest” are associated with the grave for a reason.
When Lizzy was alive, the whole world lay spread open before her, waiting to be explored. And while she was falling in love with everything that she saw, I was mesmerized by another world, just as beautiful and just as intricate, that lay contained within her. As the months passed by and she grew bigger, I used to comfort myself by reciting a litany all of the things we had yet to experience together: playing princess, ice skating, painting nails, reading Chronicles of Narnia, braiding hair, making her Halloween costume together, baking Christmas cookies, harvesting tomatoes, teaching her how to do a handstand. And then there were the later things that seemed too beautiful to be possible: watching her perform in a school play, helping her with college and job applications, applauding as she performed in music or sports, watching her get married, helping her give birth to her own children.
I lost all of this when she died. And because Cecilia is blind, there are some of these things that I will never get to experience or experience in the same way. And because Cecilia is not Lizzy, she will not experience them in the way Lizzy would have. If I am repeating myself, it is because I have had to convince myself of this unbreachable reality too many times.
Grief has many layers. It carries with it the inherent contradiction that while you can never “let go” of the lost beloved, you are forced to let go of the person you thought you were going to be and would have been had she survived. This process is ongoing and begs the question as to what or who remains when it is done. Who am I now compared to who I would have been had Lizzy lived? I don’t spend very much time on this question, mostly because I consider it to be a waste of my time. Grief over my lost selves doesn’t occupy much of my mental energy because I need that energy to obey who I am now.
Who I am now is a far cry from that blissful, radiant mother that I hoped to be and was much of the time. The world that existed within Lizzy has been removed from my grasp for the remainder of my life. And yet, I must acknowledge that another world of possibility lay within the personhood of Cecilia. Is that world less worth honoring, reverencing, or exploring? Is Cecilia herself less valuable because her life began in the wake of my devastation? What does Cecilia suffer, unknowing, in her little, developing brain? How can she ever understand why her mother is so broken–or why she was chosen to come into a broken family inside of a broken body?
I don’t have the answers that I will one day have to give Cecilia. The only thing I know is that there is a whole world contained within my second daughter that is sometimes far too easy to ignore. When I am lost inside my grief, I forget how to become lost in Cecilia’s wandering, nystagmus-ridden eyes. I forget the miracle that she is and the host of possibility that remains as long as she draws breath.
Somehow, hating yourself always lands you in dead-ends. When you find yourself there, you can choose to beat your hands against the indifferent wall in rage and frustration or you can fall to the ground and become a victim. The hardest thing to do is also the most humbling; you must admit that you took a wrong path and now must turn around and face the long trudging way back to the road that you know leads where you actually wanted to go.
These days, the only roads I find worth following are the ones hinted at when Cecilia bursts into a smile that seems to consume her entire body. There is a world contained within each of my daughters. The gate to Lizzy’s world requires a key that I don’t have. But there is no gate to the world within Cecilia, and nothing is stopping us from exploring that world together. Nothing, that is, until the something that eventually must.
Lord, teach me to remember to live as though time is running out.
