Falling (Slowly)

“Take this sinking boat and point it home
We’ve still got time
Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice
You’ll make it now

Falling slowly, eyes that know me
And I can’t go back
And moods that take me and erase me
And I’m painted black
Well, you have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It’s time that you won.”

– “Falling Slowly” from Once

It’s early November and the weather has finally shifted, turning the trees that line our walk a burnished orange and cheery yellow. The air has changed, the weight of heat and sunlight dissipating, transforming with crisp clarity until each breath feels like a drink of cold water. It seems like there is more oxygen in the air and each breath is invigorating. As the sun moves further away, the patches of light and warmth are more treasured and elusive: something to grasp at between cool swells of breeze.

The days are starting to blur together. I do not understand how time can pass so swiftly and so slowly at the same time. With each day that passes, Cecilia grows, and consequently, I am further from the days when Lizzy was alive. With each day that passes, I walk towards my own death, Cecilia’s death, the death of all living things, and the hope of eternal life with Lizzy. With each day that passes, Cecilia grows and I grow to know her more, strengthening my desire to live and strive for a good and honorable life with her.

Cognitive dissonance has become the primary state of my brain. At all times, I must hold in tension the joy of loving Cecilia with the desperate sorrow of missing Lizzy. The two are never experienced without each other. I have learned to live and breathe with two opposites, united only by the one thing that bonds them eternally; I am their mother.

I have learned how to laugh when Cecilia is so happy that her toothless, beautiful little mouth is stretched wide open in a seemingly endless smile of pure delight. The fact that my laughter is soon accompanied by tears as a memory of Lizzy rushes in is just part of how I live. Sometimes, we lay side by side and I hold her tiny hand, playing with her fingers as she examines and explores my hand while I tell her about her big sister. Other times, I am mesmerized by her dimples, how quickly she can be brought to a smile, or the deep Atlantic blue to her eyes, and I can’t help but think about how Lizzy’s eyes were more Caribbean blue.

Cecilia loves to talk and has an opinion about everything. Lizzy also loved to talk but tended to comment more than exclaim. Cecilia is an excellent nurser but will out and out refuse to nurse if she would rather be bounced, swayed, or rocked. Cece loves movement and being able to see what’s going on around her and is far more content in the stroller and car seat than Lizzy was at first. For Lizzy, nursing was a panacea, and although she learned to love movement, she was always most content to be held and nursed.

I often wonder what my life would have been like with both of them. There is still a part of me that feels (and will always feel) that I was meant to have two living daughters, growing up together. But another part of me is growing to recognize how little any of us truly know or can make statements about what should have been. Still, I spend a great deal of time thinking about what age Lizzy would be now and how she would have played with, reacted to, and grown up with Cece.

I cannot help falling in love with Cecilia, although it is a different kind of experience to falling in love with Lizzy. With Lizzy, it was all fireworks, starlit eyes, total exuberance, and unending joy. With Cecilia, it has been slower and softer. With the infinite patience of babies, she has beguiled me with the purity of her presence. Throughout my divorce and then through the loss of Lizzy, Cecilia has been there, quietly in the background, a pulse beating steadily within me. And now that she is born and has all the same needs and demands of any other infant, she is still content to simply be with me and be patient with my grief.

Quietly, Cecilia is with me. We eat, we nurse, we walk, we sleep, we pray. She is with me in all things. Softly, I am falling in love with her, not because she demands it or is so beautiful that I cannot help it; rather, just because she is. She is. . . infinitely . . . with. . . me.

I have written before about how love is, first and foremost, a being with. I know no better way to describe the way in which Cecilia loves me and in which I am learning to love her. Loving Lizzy was like drinking sunlight. Loving Cecilia is like waking to the sound of birdsong at dawn, when you wake to realize that the night, with all its terrors and nightmares, is finally fading.

I think, through it all, I am learning to be grateful that I have loved and been loved by human beings as extraordinary as my daughters. As people, when we experience the beautiful and the good, it is only natural to want more and more of it, and thus I will never stop wanting more of Lizzy. But I am also teaching myself to focus on gratitude for her life and for that fact that I was chosen to be her mother. There are human beings in this world who live much or all of their lives not knowing what it is to love and be loved in the way I am privileged to love and be loved by my daughters.

I am also learning that I am not in control of anything. Things happen to you, and you cope. You keep waking up and moving forward, because, ultimately, there is no other choice. I can exercise my free will constantly and still feel that control is an illusion. Things are too big and I am too small. What happened to Lizzy is too big for me. Even loving Lizzy was too big for me, although I would have happily dwelt in the “bigness” of it for the rest of my life. My daughter was so extraordinary that I felt honored and delighted to dedicate my life in service to hers. And I do not feel this any less for Cecilia.

But I do feel as though I, myself, am less. I have both lost more than I can bear and gained insight into being human that I never wanted. I feel like I am falling, perpetually, towards my own death, grasping and hoping to leave something behind that matters. I feel like I am falling in love with Cecilia, and it continues to feel unexpected and wondrous, even though I am becoming accustomed to it. And, always, I feel like I am falling towards Lizzy, searching for her in my dreams, hoping to find her when I wake, and rising to swallow my tears and spend another day trying to become worthy of meeting her when I die.

It is a slow falling, this thing called my life. I don’t pretend to understand it. All I know is that today, Cecilia is six months old, exactly. Lizzy died seven months ago, exactly. And the thing that most colors today is gratitude that I was given the gift of being their mother. Today, I have room for nothing else.