Thanksgiving

I do not have a monopoly on grief, nor on pain, nor on suffering. When Lizzy died, I joined the ranks of untold billions of mothers from the origin of the human species who have watched their children die, and watching, wished to die themselves. When I speak of Lizzy’s death as the worst thing that could have been done to me, I still feel this to be true, excepting only a scenario in which I lose both Lizzy and Cecilia. I have, in fact, met and spoken with parents who have lost two children. It is the only thing worse than losing one child.

This alone should be enough to demonstrate that I am just one among many breathing today who are suffering with every breath. However, such a surfeit of suffering by its own nature engenders philosophy. It is impossible not to use this suffering to consider those things that you still have–that have not been taken from you. So we see in so many examples in human history of those victims of slavery and genocide in which everything has been taken–possessions, family, dignity, vitality–and yet there remains still a kernel within the human psyche that cannot be consumed by evil. The resilience of the human brain throughout the Holocaust is a perfect example of this.

The first book I read after Lizzy died was Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. In this book, he speaks of one of his patients that had survived the Holocaust even though his wife and six children had been killed. And yet this man finds a reason within himself to live (with the help of Frankl). The first time I read through The Compassionate Friends website, I read about a toddler close to Lizzy’s age who had been murdered. After years and years of grief, her parents are still numb with it.

Yes, there are worse things people have endured.

And realizing this, I cannot help but be grateful for those things that I do have. For example: my room in my sister’s beautiful home–a room rich with memories of Lizzy and in which I am now busy building memories with Cece. I have shelter, food, safety, and warmth for myself and my daughter. How many alive right now are suffering through the constancy of the November winds with not even a coat to block the cold? How many are hungry or alone on this day that so celebrates food and family? How many do not have access to education or resources that could allow them to pursue their own mental or physical health for the sake of their children?

Yes, I am blessed. In times like these, it is tempting to enumerate the terrible things in your life that you wish would change. And, don’t get me wrong, I do think about Thanksgiving 2020 and what I hope will have changed by then, although the one thing that I need and want most to change can never change. Death and grief are immutable, and Lizzy will be just as absent at the Thanksgiving table of 2020 as she is now.

Of course I remember waking up a year ago today, awash in a black sink of depression because my marriage and health were both plummeting headlong in destruction. Last year, I could only focus on what I didn’t have or should be having. What I should be able to give my children. But the reality is that last year, I woke to my beloved Lizzy, chattering, nursing, laughing and playing. I awoke pregnant with Cecilia. I awoke to spend the day with Lizzy, watching her interact with the world around her, but all I could see was what I didn’t have, when in reality, I had everything because I had my two girls.

So this year, even though I am waking to the burbling presence of Cecilia and the ever-conspicuous and aching absence of Lizzy, I find I cannot become lost in what I don’t have. I could enumerate for you all of the ways in which my life has become so very much worse in the span of one year, but I am making the choice not to do so.

Because–you see–Cecilia is with me. I can focus on the feeling I have when she laughs in her sleep or the dusty shadow her lashes cast against her cheek. I can sit next to her stroller as she naps and watch the wind loosen shower after shower of gold and brown leaves from the massive trees that border the drive. I can watch the pink tide of sunset break through the horizon of black branches and fade all too soon into a twilight blue that will dissipate within minutes. I can see a flurry of snow pass before me and disappear so fast that I wonder if it was even there to begin with.

And the thing is that each and every second that I have in which my blood still circulates, my lungs pump air, and my heart still beats is an opportunity: an opportunity to make a life for Cecilia and to be grateful for every. single. second. of Lizzy’s most precious life. The reality is now that when I think about what Lizzy deserves, I think about how she deserved life so very much more than I deserve it. And I utterly refuse to waste mine thinking about what I don’t have rather than shaping what I can have, and mostly. . . being grateful for what I do have.

Cecilia is alive, breathing slowly and peacefully on my lap. And the two years that I had with Lizzy cannot be taken from me even though she has bodily been taken from me. So, for each second that Cecilia keeps breathing, I will fight to make my life worth it because I have been more blessed and loved more deeply than so very many people in this world.

So this Thanksgiving, I have only this to say to God, to my family, to Cecilia, and to Lizzy: Thank you for your lives. Thank you for letting me love you. And thank you for loving me.