April 12th is the day. 2017 the year. 78 weeks (546) long and incomplete days.
I'm tempted to call this time agonizing. A nightmare. I would certainly like to capture and sum it up in those simple words of reference to utterly terrible. I just can't lie to you and tell you that all 78 weeks have been misery.
I made a choice to pull myself out of the depths of hell. The place where a parent goes in their darkest of days. The deep well of sorrow that holds you down in 2 foot of ice cold water, surrounded by blackness and cold brick you can't use as leverage to get to the top. I stayed in that place a while. Maybe some will think not long enough. That I even deserved to stay there. I just couldn't survive in that well. I had to find light, pull on the rope thrown to me and climb ever so slightly to the middle and hover.
That's where I feel I am today. There's a bucket, attached to a rope. The bucket is empty, but can be filled. I can use it as a seat as I dangle midway down the well and swing on it gently, swaying side to side for comfort. I can dangle from the wooden bucket, grasping each side of it in my hands while I let my feet kick below me. This would be a day I risk falling back into the cold water below. I can also use the bucket to stand on. The sides are sturdy and thick and supported and I have the rope to help me balance and feel like I'm a few feet closer to the top. Nonetheless, I'm in the middle of the well. Darkness is below. Light is above.
Seventy-Eight weeks ago, I lost the love of my life. The one person that I put my whole self into and committed to giving true love and happiness to. The one who saved me with her first breath and the one that made me jump in the well with her last. My "Forever 18", bright eyed, loving and graceful daughter took a split second between life and traveling to the other side and then she was gone.
You see, my daughter's death was ruled by the investigators as a suicide. Not a word anyone takes lightly. Certainly not one I took lightly. Her vehicle crashed into a light pole on the night of October 12, 2015 and her frail body could not sustain her injuries. After some forensics were done, it was found that the police department felt that she took her own life. This was something I was willing to put up a fight to change. I guess I didn't have enough fight in me or enough facts and argument to help her in her last moments of need that a mother could help her with.
There are so many things I want to tell the world. Her story. That night. All the things I believe would rule her death as an "Unintentional Injury" rather than a "Suicide". Maybe I'm blind. Maybe I'm in denial. I don't know. But, I feel like I do know my baby. And 78 weeks ago was not the day she planned on leaving this worldly plain.
Since her passing, life has completely flipped on it's end. My household went from a very balanced 2 female, 2 male occupancy to 1 female, 2 males and a male dog. I guess if you count the cat, I've got another female here. The noise in the house is significantly more quiet. Justice's presence was ALWAYS known. Whether the cabinets were banging, the refrigerator was opening and closing, the clank of ice cubes on the side of a glass of sweet tea was jingling, music and movies were playing or teenagers were bouncing in and out the front door - there was always noise. Her little brother, he's a mouse. You never know what part of the house he is in. Justice's room was always filled with noise of a movie on the TV, the wireless speaker playing or the most usual sounds were those of muffled conversations via FaceTime with her friends.
Those aren't there anymore. Her room is ghostly quiet. There's times when there's a thump in there. I know it's just the house settling. Every now and then it sounds strangely like the light switch behind the armour has been flipped. But the light doesn't come on. Her room is almost how she left it. She was a bit of a neat freak, so after she passed, I had to do some light organizing because I know she'd want it that way. But, there's very little dust that has settled in the room. Her laundry is still in the clothes hamper to be washed. I don't have the heart to wipe her smell out with Tide.
I've left a couple of specific things in placed these last 78 weeks. The razor she used in the shower is still there. It's my way of starting my day with her near me. Even if it's in a weird place. I've left her fingerprints of makeup on the wall above the toilet paper holder and above the door way. She was 5'11" and even when she was small she liked to tap the top of a door way to prove how tall she was getting and was. I've left her makeup and hair products under the sink, really, because I don't know what to do with them other than trash them. I replaced some posters on her wall she had torn down with plans to replace them herself. The walls were way too bare without her Lil Wayne posters that had been a staple in her bedroom since middle school. There's a container of salt in my cupboard with the seasonings that a friend gave her as a present in 10th grade or so marked in writing as "Justice's Salt".
I haven't moved her clothes or shoes in the closets and dressers. On occasion, a friend has asked for an item she wore or they gave her that meant a lot to them. I happily gave it to them. I've borrowed some socks from her well organized drawer - making sure they're placed neatly back. Her shoes pain me. I'm not sure why this hurts much more than some of the items in her room. Maybe because of the moving tribute to those lost in the Holocaust at the Museum in Washington DC? The hall of shoes is eery there. I always ask myself 'what are you going to do with these shoes?' Sometimes her little brother borrows her sports shoes. One, so he can feel close to her. Two, because he knows he has a short window to fit into them. Today I was straightening her shoes a bit and found that even though she was 18 years old, she still had a pair of blue and white basket ball shoes she wore in the 7th grade in her closet!! How?! How could I have not know that from 12 - 18, she kept those sneakers? I'm sure I had seen them before in her room. And probably straightened them half a dozen times when she was younger and I had to help her clean her room. But today, on her year and a half angelversary - it made me laugh through my tears and call out to her "Why?! Why did you keep these Princess?"
I have worn some pieces of her jewelry. And given some away to her friends. Her brother wears pieces occasionally. Mainly earrings is what I've borrowed. Because what Mother / Daughter relationship isn't built on stealing things from each others jewelry box? I wear her Lokai bracelet. Given to her in 9th or 10th grade by a boy she never dated but had a heart for. I wear the "Breathe" bracelet I gave her a weekend before she passed. I bought it for her at the Washington Cathedral, knowing sometimes she just needed to remember to breathe. I haven't worn or opened the jewelry box that I gave her for her graduation though. I had a necklace engraved for her in May that said "Be Extraordinary". I can't bring myself to touch that one. Unfortunately, the 2 very precious rings given to her by her grandparents are missing. There's no evidence that they were on her when she passed and if they were in her car, they weren't found in the wreckage. I'm most disappointed about these being gone.
Through the last 78 weeks, my family has become much closer. The three of us here cling to each other daily for support and happiness. A lot of people have asked me how I've been going on...or doing so well...or get out of bed every day. I have to give credit to one person for that. A women I met only twice, messaged me about 2 months after Justice passed. She told me a short story of how she had lost a sibling in her youth and how her mother completely "checked out of life". She gave some examples of how even 12 years later, her mom is a completely different person. Then she said to me something that made me know that I could not live in the bottom of the chilly, black well I was spending time in. It made me think for a very long time about the light above. Even as the light moved through the day across the opening of the deep column I was at the bottom of, the darkness turned to light as the light came back each morning.
She said "I felt like I lost my mom at the same time".
I raise a boy, 7 years younger than his sister. She was his only and entire world from birth. Where I was emotionally would be different than where he was emotionally. Our perspective and longevity of our relationship with Justice was different. I knew that I was going to be his new anchor. She always had been. But, what I couldn't bare was the thought of him ever feeling like he lost her AND me in one night. That was unacceptable and I refused to punish him with that secondary loss of a mother who "checked out" of life because his sibling was gone. And while that was occurring, I have another son I hope to reunite with in some time after his adoption who needed to know about his sisters life after all was lost to be a part of her. Both the boys, brothers, need me to be present and frankly - handle my shit.
And that's what I have attempted and occasionally succeeded in doing. I have used counseling, meditation, volunteer work, reading, connecting with other grieving parents, better eating - like, seriously, anything I could do to grab the rope dangling a bucket into the well and pull myself higher to the light.
Today was expected to be a bad day. No one wants to know April 12th as a day they've live 546 days after their Childs death. Most parents, including me, have had many moments and days where they want to join their child. I don't feel shame in that. It's natural to want to be by their side no matter where they are. If even on the 'other side'. Last year, many of her friends and our loved ones gathered at my home to cling to one another at the 6 month mark of losing someone so precious to us all. A year later, it's a quiet, lonely day. All I could do was to pull some old photos out and share them so that her life wasn't left forgotten. I also reached out to a mother I heard about her daughter's death in the news and offered my hand in the journey. I don't know if she'll accept, but I hope so.
So now, on her 78 week, 546 day angelversary - I explain why I don't say 1.5 years to you, or even 18 months. One and half is a split second in the brain, even with the word year after it. 18 months is something people quickly glance over. When you realize what 78 weeks really means. Or when you here a number like 546, you pay attention. Because that is the seemingly endless stretch of time that I have spent without my heart being complete, without my world being wholly bright and how many days I've spent clinging to a bucket I'm waiting to somehow fill, once I get to the very top of my dimly lit well.
