Thunderstorm
The thudding, heavy pound of rainfall just woke me from napping with Cece. The first memory that came to me was laying in this same bed, under this same skylight, with Lizzy breathing deeply in her sleep, her little body curled in total trust against mine. Then it was Lizzy; now it is Cece, and I can no longer gauge or guess at the meaning of time.
I’ll tell you one thing, though: it’s not linear. I walk through my days with Cece as memories and visions of Lizzy flash like arrows through my brain, sometimes startling me into stillness, sometimes pushed away in the frenzy of productivity. Grief, after all, is not constructive. But pushed away or not, Lizzy is a constant presence, alive in my memory and in the wholly unwitting life and limbs of her little sister.
Last June, I watched a thunderstorm like this from the shelter of a wrap-around porch while I nursed Cece in a white and creaking rocking chair. I remember talking to her about the storm, telling her of the ghost-like flashes of lightening against the trees and snuggling her closer with each crack of thunder. I didn’t know then that she would never be able to see the sheets of rain dragging against the trees in a pleading torrent.
Back then, I couldn’t imagine the reality of Cece’s blindness or the kidney disease that may eventually claim her. Back then, she was two months old and flawless: my perfect miracle in the wake of unspeakable tragedy. And when I lay with Lizzy under this same skylight, in this same bed, and watched her sleep while the rain pounded away above our heads, I never could have imagined that my entire life and being would be shattered forever by her death.
Lizzy lay then, breathing peacefully in her sleep, curled against my chest. Cece lay now, breathing the same rhythm to the same rain song as her big sister. What separates them? Only time, and…nothing at all. So similar and so unfathomably different. Dead and blind and living and breathing–my sleeping babies–my aching arms–empty and full.
Do not let anyone lie to you. There is no recovery from this. There is no going back. And the moments in which you realize it are nothing more simple or complicated than the rain beating an insistent tattoo while you phase in and out of dreams, finally waking to the sure knowledge that all things can both come to life and pass away in the course of a summer thunderstorm.