The Flame Imperishable

I just thought of one thing that’s permanent. Love. 

– Olaf, Frozen 2

September 29, 2020

Cecilia lay fitfully beside me, fading in and out of sleep. Again and again, she veered towards consciousness, crying briefly and bumping her head against the headboard, unable to settle and unable to sleep. I murmured meaningless noises, trying to soothe her, knowing that I was doing nothing. She flipped suddenly to her side and pushed herself into a sitting position, immediately falling backwards over the pillow across my stomach, so tired she fell immediately back to sleep.

This will pass, I thought. God, please let this pass.

She launched forward then, emitting a fearful cry and began to vomit, coating her pajamas and the sheet beneath us in deep orange bile. I could only hold her helplessly as she continued to convulse over and over again, emptying the contents of her stomach. She gave a throaty, desperate cry and reached for me. I launched into action, soothing and singing to her while I cleaned up the mess and got her undressed.

Too terrified to give her my milk or any liquid, I wiped clean her mouth and held and sang to her softly, rocking and rocking and rocking until she settled and we lay down to sleep once more. Her little body clung to mine even in her sleep, as though seeking the reassurance she somehow knew I was unable to give.

In total physical depletion, Cecilia slept. And as she slept, I was transported back in time to my last night with Lizzy. Cecilia’s breathing was barely audible, and yet I could hear Lizzy’s ragged inhalations, becoming more shallow and fitful each time she woke and succumbed again to the consuming exhaustion. Cecilia said no words, and yet I could hear Lizzy gasping, “Mommy,” and asking again and again for water. Cecilia woke and launched immediately into dry heaving, crying brokenly between each bout and wrapping frantic fists about my forearms. I held her and soothed her back to sleep, and as I did, I could feel Lizzy in my arms, vomiting up all of the water I had thought was hydrating her through the night. I lay back down with Cece, giving her what comfort my body could provide, and yet I remained trapped in the car with Lizzy on the way to the emergency room, giving her the water for which she so desperately begged and mopping up the resultant vomit with a towel again and again.

The darkened bedroom in which Lizzy had lain dying and in which Cecilia and I now lay spun outwards in front of me in ridged layers of swollen black, sucking with steady gravity towards the abysmal vortex at its center. The room was utterly, utterly silent, but if there had been noise, I would barely have heard it past the sound of my own pulse throbbing crimson through my skull.

She is going to die, a voice said to me. She is going to die just like Lizzy, and you are going to sit there and watch, just like you did with Lizzy.

I am waiting for her to die, I responded.

Yes, said the voice, and then there will be no reason left for you.

Yes, I agreed. I am waiting for her to die, and I am waiting to die.

There is no better way to say it, said the voice.

Yes, I agreed. Those are the two most true statements in my life.

Yes, agreed the voice. Now, let’s discuss some other things that are true.

And for the rest of the night, as Cecilia cried in her sleep and I held her through her misery, the voice talked, and I listened and agreed.

October 6, 2020

Cecilia chatted happily to herself as she munched periodically on a piece of my homemade turkey jerky. With an exclamation of delight, she picked up the hammer from her new xylophone and began to bang it in unalloyed satisfaction against her changing table.

I smiled, feeling warmth suffuse my throat and fall molten into my core. Turning my attention back to straightening the room, I picked up the Eric Carle Halloween gift bag from my desk to fold it up and read the tag on the side, saying “We love you, Cece!” Its contents, including Sheep Trick or Treat and You’re My Little Pumpkin Pie, lay on Cece’s baby piano where my big sister had placed them after reading to Cece this morning.

Love for my sister swelled within me, and I breathed deeply, wanting to capture this moment: this exact sensation. The sounds of birdsong trickled through our open window, and I heard Cece giggle as she methodically pulled off her socks. October sunlight warmed the rich honey of the floorboards beneath her, and I squatted down beside her and brushed her ever-lengthening hair out of her eyes.

“Pumpkin Pie!” I exclaimed, “Did you scoot yourself all the way over here from Mama’s bureau? What a big girl you are!”

Dimples deepening in a growing smile, Cece sniffed loudly, eliciting her favorite game.

I sniffed back several times, and then launched her into my arms, exclaiming, “You’re going to be walking before I know it!”

Cece wrapped all four limbs around me and squeezed me tightly in a full body hug. “Mama!” she said happily, and I squeezed her back, trying to memorize every detail of the feel of her in my arms.

“Should we read your new Halloween books, lovey dovey?” I asked, turning to sit her on my lap in our reading corner. “Then we need to figure out what you’re going to be for Halloween!”

“Bah!” Cece agreed, stretching her hands forward eagerly to help turn the pages. And as I opened the first page, it felt like the whole world stretched before us, vast and welcoming and waiting only for our participation.

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Permanence is the lie of both despair and joy. In the midst of either emotion, there swims blazing certainty that this has always been the way it is and shall ever be. I think there’s something inside of me that wants to argue that death is permanent, but the truth is that we don’t know. Even the dead body is in a state of flux, continually decaying, trying to feed the biochemistry of the Earth whose very life blood depends on death and renewal. Is death permanent? Is Lizzy just gone? My suspicion remains that the answer to both these questions is no.

I will continue to work and grieve and suffer and, one day, I will die. Cecilia, too, will die, either as a child or an adult. In between are these moments that I hold like flame, cupped between my hands. Sometimes it burns me, and I fear skin, blood, and marrow alike will melt into the flame. But sometimes it only warms me, casting a soft, lantern-like glow and spreading until Cece and I are bathed in luminescence. Who am I to define the nature or origin of that flame? All I know is that it makes me want to die and makes me want to live and love until there is neither it nor me but only the brilliance of consummation.

All I know is that for me, that flame has a face. A face with blue eyes and blonde hair that I see every moment I still breathe, and that I know I will see the day my lungs finally give out.

Lizzy . . . be our light. Shine for us the way home.