A Ghost Enfleshed
Like most sighted toddlers, Lizzy was a wonderful mimic. She loved doing all the grown up things that I would do. When I brushed my hair, she wanted to brush her hair; when I put on lip balm, she thrilled when I next bent to apply it to her tiny, pursed lips. When I swept the floor, she wanted to get the dustpan and brush out to help me. One of her most favorite things to do was to brush her teeth while I brushed mine. She would ask, “Brush-ing teeth?” and reach up excitedly to receive her mini toddler toothbrush. Then she would busily suck and gnaw at the small dollop of toothpaste, eventually stepping on her stool to try and mimic my spitting the used toothpaste into the sink. Lizzy was an insatiable student; it was like nothing could stop her. Nothing, that is, until the one thing that finally stops us all.
I knew that when Cecilia started brushing her teeth, it would be a grief hurdle for me. But as I woke each morning to four front teeth becoming increasingly covered with a yellowish fuzz, I could no longer deny that it was time. I bought a new training toothpaste and got out the unused extra packages of toothbrushes that came with Lizzy’s toothbrush, which now sits, sterilized and haunting, on the twin, white shelves where I keep all of her things. Since Cece has only ever heard me brush my teeth, she didn’t quite understand the concept until I placed the toothbrush into her mouth and began to scrub. The first few nights, she fussed, cried, and pushed it away, but last night, I said, “It’s time to brush teeth,” and my perfect little darling just opened her mouth, let me scrub, and then sucked away contentedly on the toothpaste, eventually taking the toothbrush from me to scrub and suck all by herself.
It will never be the same. Even the same things are not the same. I wonder sometimes if Cecilia wasn’t blind whether or not some of these experiences would be strict repeats of what I had with Lizzy. But even if Cecilia could see, I think she would still do things differently. I am reminded every day how radically impossible it is for Cecilia to replace Lizzy. She can wear the same clothes, use the same brands of diaper and wipes, play with the same toys, and read the same books, but she behaves and reacts as Cecilia and not as Lizzy. And yet there are toys and objects that I still see as belonging to Lizzy and not to Cecilia. There is no rationalizing grief.
Cecilia has started to say “Mama” multiple times a day, months earlier than Lizzy did. Cece and I keep up a running conversation throughout our days together, and whenever she especially wants my attention, she will call “Mah-ma! Mah-ma!” and I coo in response, “Mama sees you, baby, Mama hears you.” And every time that Cecilia calls me “Mama,” I feel a little more grounded, more real, more enfleshed. It’s as though by naming me, she’s shaping who I am and who I’m becoming. With her every call, I become a little less of a ghost and a little more of a mother.
I have always struggled to define myself, feeling stranded on the fringes of society and unable to rest in who I was for most of my life. Until Lizzy was born, that is. With Lizzy’s birth, whatever made up “me” crystallized and fused into a soul-deep knowledge that this was it. This was who I was born to be. And then that person died when Lizzy died.
What does that make me now? Since losing Lizzy, I have been a ghost, a zombie, a robot–a victim. And perhaps I am still all these things and all of them at the same time. I think when I begin to feel one of these identities taking over, I tend to stop, breathe, cry, and then stand up and continue. . . . continue, that is, with the next necessary thing to care for, love, and help Cecilia. I’m not sure if this variously erases, concretizes, or ignores these identities that swirl in a muddy fog around my brain. All I’m sure of is that each morning, I wake up just a little bit stronger.
If I have a new identity goal, I think strength is it. I think there are endless ways to make myself healthier, smarter, more selfless, and more hopeful. And every time I work to make myself just that little bit better of a person, Cecilia benefits and benefits directly. If there is no longer any point to my life except to care for this little blind girl, this bundle of unspeakable need, then the only rational goal becomes to make myself as strong as possible in order to fulfill that need, in whatever ways it manifests, for as long as it remains.
What else matters?
Strength is an identity I can accept and pursue. Strength, resilience, courage, endurance–these things form the foundation of motherhood. The implacable logic of flesh demands that if I was meant to be Lizzy’s mother, then so too was I meant to be Cecilia’s. And if the mother that I was to Lizzy died the day that she died, then a new motherhood was born unto me on the day Cecilia was born. It may not look, feel, or taste the same, but it is motherhood nonetheless. And grief has carved out a strength within me that I never looked for and never expected but is present nonetheless.
And so as the heavy darkling of twilight folds into night, and I wake each morning to the steady patter of rain, the brightening of sun, or the serenade of crickets, I begin to understand who I am and just a little bit of why I matter. I curl to face Cecilia, blissfully asleep, dusky lashes purling like waves across her rosy cheeks, fragile chest rising and falling and slack limbs spread in somnolent surrender. As though she were still a newborn and I a hormone-drunk new mom, I stare and stare and stare, unable to quench my need to wonder at her beauty, her breath, her abundant and unfading presence. And somewhere in that quiet, timeless stretch between when I am awake and she is not, I begin to realize that no identity I have had or ever will have can matter as much as the one she gives me every time she opens her bright, unseeing eyes and her pink, smiling lips and names me Mama.