WS Merwin
One of the real paradoxes of dealing with our loss has been how we balance holding on to the past with embracing the future. The memories of that first week after Erin’s loss still haunt me: when I changed her bedsheets and found the looney from the tooth fairy under her pillow from a tooth lost 2 days previously…or when I ran that final load of washing and folded laundered clothes for a child who would never again wear them – that last pink and purple load. Those 2014 Christmas presents never unwrapped.
But life moves on – relentlessly, purposefully. I remember in those first incredibly difficult months imagining Erin headed to Brownies on Wednesday afternoon…but then discovered that Brownies had moved to a Thursday. And the ache I felt every time I walked past Claires in Park Royal, where she had her ears pierced without a flinch, was alleviated when it closed down. Would Erin still have the same friends? Would she have persisted with her violin, bought just the day before her accident? Would she still be playing soccer, field hockey, taekwondo? Would I have capitulated on the hair battles? Would she still be the thoughtful, energetic, caring, untidy ‘tough as nails sweet as candy’ girl that she once was? With her 17th January birthday next month, she would have reached her teenage milestone as the oldest child in PJ, finishing her months in elementary school. Who would Erin be? What would she be becoming?
But our family has marched to its own changes: we have ‘children’ again – not a child. Cameron, a grounded, responsible, perceptive teenager, is double Erin’s age. Madeleine and Sebastian have now reached half the age that Erin herself had reached. They are healthy, lively, bright and engaging pre-schoolers. I have reopened my language book again recording the delightful mispronunciations and phrases of young children (such as ‘Bless-yous’ for sneezes). Once again we are experiencing the joys of sibling interaction: Madeleine on an afternoon without her twin asserted, ‘I miss my brother; he’s my best friend in the whole world’. Madeleine is so like her sister in both demeanour, her love of food and solid frame. Whining is back. Untidiness is back. The hair battles are back! They have transformed our lives. We are exhausted – all the time!
So what do we do with this juxtaposition of grief and joy; past memories and unknown future. I have learned to hold on doggedly to the lessons of Erin, distilled in that very first week after we lost her. She calls us to be our own trailblazing selves to ‘live in the moment’ for the past is gone and the future is unknown; claim the present and make it beautiful. And Erin is uncompromisingly a part of our family’s present – she is at our dinner table, we include her in our conversations and celebrations, and her short life informs our raising of Madeleine and Sebastian who refer regularly to their big sister.
So as you go into the festive season with its bustle and busyness, savour those precious fleeting moments of the present - of beauty, love and life. And yes, I even celebrate moments of the mundane – for we have pink and purple in the laundry again.