Rediscovering the Desire to Live After My Child Died

“Three years later, I choose life.”

June’s older sister — photo by author

The tiny pond with its lace-like collar of briars and evergreens set next to a white barn was where I spent many of my six-year-old summer afternoons beside my grandmother. She unpacked our picnic lunch as I kneeled at the murky water’s edge, flipping over lily pads. 

While I ran my fingertips over the veiny surfaces of each waxy lily pad, the mother duck and her ten babies waddled by. Every so often, they glided into the pool of darkness which resembled a pool of lightness as the surface absorbed the last hours of waning afternoon sun.

It was in those serene moments, I wished to touch the fluffy brown feathers of the babies before my grandmother beckoned me for lunch and then back to the car. Before I missed my opportunity to really live.

In the years to come, the opportunity to really live was a sentiment that grew dimmer. It dulled with the monotony of daily, adult life. I tried to polish it to make it shiny again, but ultimately, resigned to accepting that it was the way life was. Then my daughter June was diagnosed with cancer and any glimmer that was left was entirely obscured. 

That’s when I forgot how to live. 

………………….

Today, three years after losing June, the pond revisits my memories where it symbolizes the unknown, unfulfilled desires, anticipations, and hopes I once had. Its waters often more dark than light. 

Never could I have imagined that one day, my child would teeter on the edge of death, then slip into an abyss much like the pond. Ultimately, to succumb to the undercurrent of cancer which preyed on invisible weaknesses in her body and disguised itself for months as a colds and cutting teeth as the weeds wrapped themselves around her delicate ankles, pulling her to the bottom.

The entirety of my memories trickle like water droplets into the vast pool that is my prefrontal cortex, also known as the memory retrieving part of the brain. In ways I cannot describe, each is related to June. 

People often talk about the “before” (insert trauma here) memories which initially for me, were confined to just the days and months before the event (June’s diagnosis). 

Although, today, my memory no longer discriminates because quite literally, every memory I can thread right back to her. 

It’s either a sign I am coping by way of intricately tying my grief, my love for June, to each living breathing moment I’ve experienced on this earth. Or a sign that I am suffering greatly in my day to day life. Both are true. 

The absence of June is present in each of my cells. Dare I say, my atoms? I am not a scientist, but I feel her within me, on me, around me. Since she is present in my cells, in my energy, then she is ever-present. It feels comforting, but I imagine it also sounds a bit insane. 

Is this how it is for other mothers who have lost a child? 

The absence of June is not weighted in her death, but rather in her potential. A potential deeply rooted in my own.

………………….

When I thread June into past memories, it’s obvious that she has always been a part of my life, its purpose, its pain, its fulfillment. She’s gone, a wound that will never heal, but I refuse to believe that she isn’t still here. A likely equivalent to me pouring liquid bandaid into the gaping hole. 

Is this healthy, integrated grief? Is this the way it works? You know, mending my broken heart by attaching June to everyday things like my morning coffee, a trip to the school bus, or in the quiet hours without kids where sometimes, I sit beside her box of ashes and still cry. For her life. For her loss. For the things her father and I never had the opportunity to give her. 

………………….

So when I remember the little girl I once was by the pond, reaching for the ducks, I see June, despite us not meeting for another 29 years. 

Because I know the pain to come when I reflect on the younger version of myself, I wish to prepare her for life’s tragedies. To reassure her that good things aren’t always tethered to horrific circumstances. It’s nonsensical, however, because I could never prepare for what was to come unless I wanted to forfeit my chance to really live. 

I am still that little girl, so I gather my tools and teach myself about trust. I choose to believe that with every passing day, there is a plan. I remind myself how fortunate I am to be a tiny part of it.

Nothing is ever lost. 

………………….

When June passed away, I slipped to the bottom of the murky waters of grief, initially, not caring about anything in my life. I didn’t care if there was dinner or clean laundry. I didn’t care if the sun never shone again. In fact, I’d often pretend that a plane flying a little too low overhead, creating a booming vibration, was significant of the end of the world. 

I’d imagine it was an asteroid and in those moments before it hit and the black silence swallowed me whole, I’d think so peacefully, “Oh, thank God, we are all in this together.” I’d feel less alone. In the months after June’s death, an asteroid hitting my house was an alarmingly comforting thought. 

Then the months came, when I futilely grabbed at everything around me as I sank, like the stems of lily pads, hoping they’d save me, trying to make my way back to the surface. Those were the worst months because I began wanting to live, but didn’t know how. 

Eventually, six months after June’s death, I hoisted myself onto dry land. Until recently, I had managed to stay on the edge, dipping my toes into the glistening water, but never without the threat of being dragged under again. 

I’m familiar with the cool, mushy, complicated bottom. I don’t like living there. You’d think by now, I’d have figured out how to avoid existing there, but what I’ve learned three years later, is that it’s insidious and as often surprising for me as it is for my loved ones when I get pulled downward again.

………………….

In February, people, mainly my husband, started to remark on my behaviors. “That’s not like you,” he said one night at the dinner table when I made a snide remark about someone else. It wasn’t. I didn’t contest because it was true. It didn’t feel like me. I felt dirty and cruel for making such comments. 

It wasn’t me.

Snapping at my children.

Not answering phones calls.

Wishing everyone would just leave me alone so I could lay in bed all day.

Victimized, once again.

I put on a shiny face every time I left the house so that people wouldn’t be concerned or make more remarks about my mental health being in shambles. 

I imagined murmurs of “she lost her daughter…cancer…yeah, terrible…”whispered behind me when I walked away. 

In public outings, I kept my mouth shut and didn’t engage as to not draw more attention. On the outside, I pretended that on the inside, I wasn’t drowning.

What is wrong with me? It has been three years since June died, I thought. I should be doing better than this.

………………….

Today, I close my eyes and meditate, envisioning the trauma shedding away from my body like that of a serpent’s skin, but it’s wrong. It’s all wrong. The trauma grows from my root. It festers on the skin, but it is not the skin I need so badly to shed. I go deeper. To the pit of my stomach where I feel the immense ball of hurt and pain that has created a home within me. 

All while I am growing older, June is staying the same age, the hurt reminds me. 

It’s been three years. I can speak this, think it, and still, the last three years have been the longest and shortest of my life. The longest days wedged tightly, often uncomfortably, into the shortest years. 

My life as a bereaved mother oscillates between being destined to suffer like this until the bitter end, and finding the strength and curiosity to flip over another lily pad to see if I might again be interested in what I find. 

………………….

Memories of childhood resurface when I am in the darkness. I am reminded of the desire to live. Like when, as a six year old girl, I reached fearlessly for the beautiful lilies, unaware I could fall to the bottom, just to have a smell of the flowering top. Then, flipping the pads over, surprised to find that the slimy green skeletal belly was just as intriguing as the sweet smelling flower. 

In present day, the fractal network of spiny veins that grew from the murky waters and mud, reminds me there has to be a way. 

My life was never the pristine sunlit surface. I had only imagined it that way because that was the image I wanted to portray as a mother. Letting go of the image of what my life was supposed to be like has helped me to heal today. I am reborn from the muck and mire and similar to the lilies, I am using what resources life has given me to grow. It’s my job to extract the nutrients that sustain my life.

………………….

At times, I still feel as if I am sinking as I continually adventure into my new, bereaved, altercated, yet more beautiful world. I am drowning and resurfacing in the greater pond of grief, although today, there’s something I can clearly see on the surface. In the reflection of the light, exists my desire to really live after losing a child.

When the weight of the world becomes too great, and the whites of my eyes grow dimmer the deeper I sink, I refuse to close them. If I hit the bottom it’s not because I’ve given up. My eyes wide open are the proof that I’ll have sunk trying to see the surface. To see what was left. What the rest of my life might bring. 

This isn’t an easy road, however it’s my road. I am beginning to come to peace with that.

………………….

Like the lily, at the end of every day, I close in on myself and go deeply within. I stop logging events and sufferings. I’m working on leaving them behind in yesterday, so that in a few long hours, I can emerge new. 

At sunrise, I reopen. Like the lily, I am reborn. I allow for the rebirth to take place every meaningful, sad, emotional, happy, joyous, and neutral day not because my daughter is gone, but because she lived. 

In the last three years of sitting with my grief, I have begun to feel for those things that are just out of reach much like the duckling that kept me anticipating another trip with my grandmother to the pond. 

My daughter lost her life and my eyes are open. I am nearing the surface after plummeting to the bottom and like a child, I remember that feeling of wanting to grow up. 

June is gone and she doesn’t live on the bottom anymore. We do not meet there when I slip into the abyss. We meet where there is light. So much light. Hopefully, you’ll find me there on the glistening surface next to the lilies, fulfilling my budding desire to really live.