Death and dying is thick in the air around our place these days, and not just because I have an MRI on Wednesday to see if the symptoms I have are being caused by the tumors rearing their ugly little heads.
I walk a fine life with Emily of trying to remember my parents--to have her “know” them in any little way, and scaring the absolute bejesus out of her when I mention them.
This much she knows, although how much of it she actually gets, I may never know: She knows that at one time I had parents, like she does. She knows that I have told her that they would have loved her like crazy if they had gotten to meet her. She also knows that I no longer have these parents. She knows that my dad died when I was her age and that my mom died when I was a little older. It’s hard to say what any of this means to her.
The idea that I once had a mom and dad and that now I don’t seems to scare her. She asks me all the time if I miss them and whether I was sad when they died. I tell her the truth. Well, the most basic truth.
I tell her that yes, I miss them. I don’t tell her that I miss them less and less now that she and Claudia are here. That somehow they fill a hole that I thought would be gaping and weepy my whole life long. I don’t tell her that the idea of this sometimes makes me sadder than the sadness I feel that they aren’t actually here. That the idea that someone could be everything to you, then just be gone, and that then one day you might just be over it seems too awful to believe, especially because right now those girls are everything to me and I am sickened by the idea that they might ever be gone from me, and that I would be able to just go on living.
I tell her that yes, I was sad when they died. I don’t tell her that I remember yelling at my mom that she was a liar when she told me that my dad was gone and would never be coming back. I don’t tell her that that besides the memory of that moment, I only have one other memory of him at all, even though I am sure that he loved me with the same fierce, breathtaking love that Emily’s father feels for her. I don’t tell her that I was so sad when my mom died when I was seventeen that I graduated from high school early, moved away, leaving everyone I knew, and then flunked out of college. I don’t tell her that I was so sad that I truly never thought that I would get over it, that I almost got a tattoo of a song lyric, “She won’t recover from her losses” because I felt like it was already felt like it was tattooed on my forehead, that it had become who I was. I don’t tell her any of this.
But I do tell her that people die, and that while I will have to die sometime, I don’t think that I will die anytime soon and that I am doing everything I can to make sure that doesn’t happen for a long, long time. I also tell her that if I did die she would absolutely not have to take Claudia to school with her. Daddy would have a babysitter for her and Claudia while he was at work and that he would be home at night, just like always.
I let her know that no matter what there would be a line of people around the block that would take care of her. I tell her this because I was a child that worried. I thought about these things all the time and it never helped when people would tell me not to worry about it. I worried anyway that bad things might happen. I still worry, but now it's because I know bad things can and do happen. There were no family members that stepped up to take my brother and I when we were orphaned and this is not a fate that will befall my children. So I guess I mention that one as much for myself as for her.
While I wish Emily didn’t have to know that people die, that her father and I might (will) die, I do want her to know that I will always try to tell her the truth and that if she is worried about something than I take it seriously.
So, I don't know, maybe in the end I am walking this fine line, and maybe I am tripping over it. It will, no doubt, be hard to say for sure until Emily is in adult therapy.
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