The Lightening Rod

Two days before Lizzy got sick, I took her to daily mass at the Basilica of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg, MD. During mass, Lizzy fell asleep in my arms. I stood in the pews of the beautiful vaulted church, staring at the intricate mosaics and relishing the warmth of the sun filtering in colored shards through the stained glass windows. Lizzy’s sleeping form was a welcome heaviness against my chest, braced high on my ribcage so that my eight-month pregnant stomach didn’t receive any of the weight. I remember thinking that I should feel sad and overwhelmed by my broken marriage and the absence of a father in the lives of my daughters. But in that moment, I felt only joy in their presence and a burgeoning hope that although it would be just me and my girls, it would be me and my girls against the world, and the three of us would have each other, no matter what.

I drove to visit Lizzy’s grave yesterday. Although I believe Lizzy is a saint, I went to visit her grave on All Soul’s Day rather than All Saint’s Day. I deliberately didn’t think much about what I was doing. I bundled up Cecilia, grabbed a few snacks and took off. The drive was long and sad. I thought about all of the people I have lost in my life and what I thought about life and death when I was a little girl growing up. I parked the car on the road next to Lizzy’s grave, left the music going for Cecilia, and sobbed into the cold earth covering my daughter’s white coffin.

Later, I picked up Cecilia and the book I had grabbed on my way out the door that morning. I sat on the ground next to Lizzy’s headstone with Cecilia in my lap and read her Scary, Scary Halloween by Eve Bunting. It was the closest I would come to reading my daughters the book that my sisters and I grew up reading every October. Afterwards, I fed Cece a snack and told her stories about her great-grandfather, buried next to Lizzy, and about her big sister who she never got the chance to meet. I told Lizzy that I will make every second that is given to me count. I told her that I would never stop fighting to create a better world for her little sister. I asked her to help me grow in strength and courage to keep fighting in those moments when all I want to do is give up. I asked her to show me how to come home to her when the fighting is over. And then I showed Cecilia how to blow a kiss, and we pressed fingers to lips and fingers to headstones, then walked to the car and drove home.

I remember the weight of Lizzy asleep in my arms in the basilica like it was yesterday. But yesterday was not spent with Lizzy; it was spent with her body, her grave, and her headstone. I find it increasingly important to communicate to Cecilia that when we visit Lizzy’s grave, we are not visiting Lizzy; we are visiting Lizzy’s body. Lizzy herself is in heaven, and because she is a saint, she is also with us and within us, in a very special way that she isn’t with anyone else.

I remember the weight of Lizzy asleep in my arms because of how the twin weight of her little sister in my womb grounded me to the core. The warmth of Cecilia in utero, the warmth of Lizzy against my chest, and the warmth of the sun trickling through the stained glass combined on that cold March day to make me believe in dreams and miracles and starlight. In the most real of ways, I had everything I ever wanted because I was holding those two girls. I was holding a bright future. I was holding the promise of springtime. I was staring at a tabernacle in a gold-bathed basilica, but I was a tabernacle myself, holding the unborn child in my womb and a miracle child in my arms. My fullness was indescribable.

With every day that passes, Cecilia grows into more of a toddler. Two days from now, she will be eighteen months old, and Lizzy will have been gone for nineteen months. The feel of Cecilia in my arms creeps closer and closer to the feeling I remember of what it was like to hold Lizzy. Time will continue to pass; Cecilia will continue to grow. And then, one day, God willing, Cecilia will turn two, and I will recover the feeling of holding two year old in my arms, but my womb will be empty, and the gasping hole that now anchors my being will still be howling.

There has always been an emptiness that Cecilia cannot fill. One day, I will have to attempt to explain to her why she cannot fill the void that Lizzy left. I will have to articulate what it felt like to hold my two girls that day in the sunlight and what it feels like to kneel in the cold mud covering the grave of your firstborn.

I am no longer the mother who stood in that puddle of colored light yearning and planning. I have not felt the fullness of holding both my girls since the morning I took Lizzy to the emergency room. There are some things from which you cannot recover, some wounds which never heal, some places from which there is no going back.

Who I am now and what I am daily becoming is shaped as much by the light of Lizzy’s life as it is by the abyss of her death. What I am fighting for is driven as much by Cecilia’s life as it is by Lizzy’s death. I am no longer the mother I was, and yet who I am is capable of taking that memory of holding my girls in the light and the memory of holding Cecilia on her big sister’s grave and fusing them into a united fuel–fuel to transform myself and the world which will one day be all I have left to give Cecilia.

And I find these days that the light of this fuel is the only light which matters to me. The light of Lizzy burns inside me like wildfire, growing stronger with every day, making me stronger, forging me into the mother that Cecilia needs. That Cecilia deserves. Lizzy is light–blinding, pure, and binding. And me? I suppose I am just the lightning rod that needs to remain strong for as long as it can be useful. And then–blessedly–it will be over, and I will let the light consume me.