Days of the Dead (Day 3): All Souls Day

In the early months after Lizzy’s death, people would ask if I prayed or talked to Lizzy as a spirit, soul, angel, or saint. I always said “No” in response to this because Lizzy was still too human, too real, too much a toddler to be a spirit. Every second was rampant with memory of her living and breathing little body. I used to say that I thought it would be better when I could pray or talk to Lizzy like a saint.

It is no longer true that every second without her is excruciating. In three days, it will be exactly seven months since Lizzy died. I have written before of how human beings can adapt to anything, even horror, degradation, and starvation. Lizzy’s death is something that lives beside me and within me. I live and breathe with it. But becoming accustomed to the weight of a burden does not necessarily make the burden easier to bear. It is still the hardest, heaviest, and worst burden that has ever been asked of me, and there are still moments in which I crumple under its weight.

But, yes, I am used to it now. My reality is that Lizzy is not physically here with me and Cecilia is instead. I never had a chance to know what it would be like to have both of them with me. Instead, I lost Lizzy right before Cecilia was born, making my life seem like it was just repeating itself, starting over, going back to raising one child, an infant girl, from birth. Cecilia fills my days now, in exactly as full a way as Lizzy once did. And although Lizzy’s physical body is absent from my days, she is present spiritually in most things that we do.

I talk to Cecilia about Lizzy often, and together, we pray to Lizzy multiple times throughout the day, for needs both great and small. I tell Cece how beautiful she is, just like her big sister, and detail all the ways in which she is like, and unlike, Lizzy. I know some level of this is just filling the psychological void of Lizzy with thoughts, words, and memories of her to try to keep her alive in some remote way. But even if it is only a psychological mechanism, finding a way to incorporate Lizzy into my day allows me to feel her presence and to feel that I am somehow still mothering her, even though she has passed far beyond needing me to be her mother.

The point is: even if it’s only a mental game I play with myself, or a tool that I use to function, talking to Lizzy helps. Lizzy once occupied almost every minute of my waking life, either with her passive, sweet presence or active involvement. To go from this constancy to the utter nothingness after she died was like living my entire life underwater and then being expected to breathe air. It was suffocating.

I need Lizzy to still be part of my day. Without her, the gnawing emptiness grows and drags me under. So I talk to both my daughters, living and dead. I pray to my little saint. And it is better because there is a way in which I can feel Lizzy’s presence whenever I invoke her. If the spirit, the soul, and the saint is all I can have of her, I will take it.

All Souls Day remembers all those who have died in hopes of attaining heaven. It helps the bereaved mourn their dead and remember the resurrection. I attended the memorial mass and lit a candle for Lizzy, but I have to say that I feel that yesterday, All Saints Day, was truly the day to remember Lizzy. For the fact of the matter is that I don’t need to theorize about the nature of Purgatory or bargain with myself that even though she had some weaknesses, she had other strengths that must surely get her into heaven eventually. I don’t need to comfort myself that she had a full life in which she lived out her hopes and dreams, even though she made mistakes.

As so often before, I find myself not belonging even among the bereaved. My baby was two years old. She went straight to God. She never grew old enough to forget the way home to Him.

I do not get to participate in the mental and emotional comforts typically offered to the bereaved. Instead, the one comfort I have is transcendent. My daughter is a saint. I don’t need to pray for her or anticipate her making it into heaven one day. She was there the moment she left me. She is there waiting for me. She is like the candle that I lit for her tonight–a guiding, sustaining light that reminds me of the sun. She asks me to turn my face towards God and to follow her little footsteps all the way home.