Twenty-four

 

Today looks like it's going to be a nice day, doesn't it?

Not quite as nice as your birthday back in 2002, though. 

That was a glorious spring day, full of life, with flowers, like this one I found down at the Chinese Garden the other day, blooming all around us. The little courtyard at Emanuel Hospital was a riot of colorful beauty the day you were born.

Which just made the day that much harder. I know, I say this a lot, but it was bitter hard knowing that each one of those fragile, ephemeral blooms would live longer than you would. 

Still is.

Today?

Oh, no, it's nowhere near that beautiful. 

Sunny, sure, but cold.

That's the way our winters usually are, y'know; sunny and cold or rainy and not-quite-as-cold. 

I wish you already knew that, that we'd had other winters and blooming springs to remember. That you'd grown tall and strong, in sun and shadow, that we could celebrate this day as a happy one instead as a slowly dwindling memory and a distant grief.

But instead, here we are. Having just this one day to sit together in silence.

And then, as always, you will go. The next day now almost a quarter-century ago when we kissed goodbye, you in your little yellow onesie that you took with you and returned to us only as ash and sorrow.

I miss you, love.

I always will.

I know your mother does, too, and she, and I, will keep your memory alive until it is our own time to get up and pass through that door you closed behind you, all those years ago.

Goodbye, love. 

Goodbye.

 

Bryn Rose Gellar
March 1, 2002 - March 2, 2002 

Twenty-three

 Hey, you! C'mere, let me give you a hug. You're not too big for that yet, are you?

Of course you're not. You're, well, still tiny, still only one day old. This one day, twenty-three years ago, when you left us, your mom and I, just a day after you arrived.

The only place your grew up was in our hearts.

This day, and all those before and after. The days I dreamed of and hoped for and never had. Dreamed of all the things we'd do together; good...and bad, happy and sad, cheerful or angry or bored or silly.

They never happened, did they, dearest?

Now there's only this day, the day you climb up the dark stairwell and sit beside me as I cry.

Because I still miss you.

Oh, yes; there's your little brother and little sister. Yes, they're great. I love them to pieces, and always will.

But today is about you, the big sister they never had, the little girl and young woman I never got to know.

This year was even harder because I'm not just missing you but missing your mom. The first time in twenty-three years we haven't had a partner to console each other, a friend and lover to give and receive comfort. 

I called your mom today. Told her that she was in my heart, and hoped that she could find some solace in that, find some peace. It's hard on her, y'know. She carried you closer than her own skin, slept behind your heartbeat for three-quarters of a year. She dies a little every time this year thinking of and missing you.

And so do I, in a different way.

Because every year, every time this day comes, I look into the darkness for the tiny flame that was your too-brief stay with us, to remember you, to grieve for you. To wish against all the years that we had another chance, knowing we never will. 

To have the years of you, child and girl and woman grown, father and daughter, loving and beloved.

So. Sit beside me for a little while. I promise I won't try and hold you when you have to go. But just now, for this time, just for this day, let me sit and dream the dream I dreamed, the dream of the you that never came.

Bryn Rose Gellar
March 1, 2002 - March 2, 2002

Twenty-two

Oh, hey. I almost didn't see you there, sweetie.

C'mere. Siddown for a bit, can you? I'm just finishing this up, I'll be right with you.

That? Oh, it's some sort of IPA. Yeah, cliche, I know. Hey, I like 'em well enough, now that the Northwest is mostly over the "can you top this" bitterness craze. Go ahead, try a sip.

Yeah? Well, it was seven bucks at Grocery Outlet. Probably a reason for that, eh?

It's been a long year, hasn't it?

Retired? Yeah. Still working into that. Your mom is running in circles over at school; more to do, fewer to do it. Kid brother still gaming 24-7, baby sis ready to spread her wings and fly off to college...

Would you be there now?

Getting ready to graduate? Doctor, lawyer, beggarman, thief? Would you be working, instead? Putting in your forty hours behind a wrench or behind a desk?

Would you be cadging a drink from me like this, nasty hoppy IPA or what?

How much else would we have shared?

Your younger siblings share almost nothing with me. Your sister and I are both theater buffs, but she's very different from me in every other way. Your brother? I don't get him and never have.

And I never got the chance to know you.

I wish I had. I wish I'd been able to grow with you, to share your happiness and sorrow. To know you, as I had hoped, all those many years ago. But this day came, and went, and so did you, forever one day old.

I don't miss you the way your mother does. For her you're a huge hole in her heart, a part of her she'll never find, the end of her dreams for and of you.

I miss the you who never was. The little girl, the young woman, the strong daughter who, in the best way of fathers and daughters, stood by me into the grave and carried my memory beyond it.

Instead, we have yesterday, and today, and then you'll be gone again. Here, have another sip. Yeah, it gets a little better after a couple. Still not very good. Seven bucks worth.

But let's have a last round, you and I. And grin and shake our heads and look away, and when I look back you'll be gone.

Until the next time, love. Goodbye. I love you. I miss you.

Goodbye.

Bryn Rose Gellar. March 1, 2002 - March 2, 2002

Twenty

 Well, good morning, my dear.

Yes, it's early, isn't it? Blame that damn cat, yowling to go out in the small hours. If your little sister would leave her hallway door open the wretched creature wouldn't have to wake the house trying to escape and I wouldn't be sitting here, lit by only a phosphor screen waiting for my coffee to brew.

Would you like some? It's Colombian, lovely, deep and dark, rich and earthy.

Do you like coffee?

That's one of the many, many things we'll never know about you, though, isn't it?

Would you have been a coffee drinker? Were you smart and sweet, or funny, sad and blue, calm or quarrelsome, happy and bouncy or grim as the death that took you today, this day, twenty years ago.

Your birthday, love. The only one we ever had.

Here. Have a cup, anyway. I'll put a dollop of sweet cream in it to cover the bitterness.

Good? I hope you would have liked it. I'd have liked to share this moment with you, your dark hair frowzy from sleep, your eyes heavy, your hands warm and smooth around the cup, here in the darkness we'd share.

I'm sorry that we only have this night.

Tomorrow you'll be gone again, gone as you always are, running on before me across that bourne from which no traveler returns. We have only tonight, your birthday night, to sit together and remember the you that could have, should have been.

Your mother and I miss you, dear. She the you that was, me, the you that never was, the you I'd hoped to watch grow straight and young and tall as I grow stooped with age.

That's good, eh, the coffee?

We still have the rest of tonight, until you have to go. So let's sit here, love, and listen to the sound of the rain that falls in the dark, falls like the tears I've wept for you, lost and gone these many years like the steam from a coffee cup, swirling and rising and vanishing like the night as the dawn spreads across the sky.

Bryn Rose Gellar
March 1, 2002 - March 2, 2002

Nine

This was a hard post to write, and I almost couldn't bring myself to do it, and if that seems strange for someone who writes about his dead child every year, well, life can be like that sometimes.

Because this is about losing a little cat.

This - the cat, not the woman, is "Nine".

After we lost Nitty Kitty our daughter insisted that we were a "two-cat family", and that just Drachma the Merkitty alone wasn't enough. She insisted that we needed another kitty, was the guiding force behind the search, and finally found the Perfect Kitty; a small gray-and-white rescue cat. 

Her name came from the number of the storage unit in which she had to live for years.

Nine.

She'd had a tough life. One of her former families had another cat that objected to Nine, so the poor kitty had to live in a mudroom with a cat flap. 

That was it; the mudroom, the flap, and the yard, was her world.

She'd had a horrific case of ear mites that had given her a savage infection that was so bad that it messed up her inner ear, and thereafter she lived with her head cocked to one side, as though she was faintly perplexed by the entire world.

She was a foster kitty, so The Girl brought her home in hope. 

Drachma was an utter shit, of course, but the little newcomer was so sweet and loving that everyone but the Boy was willing to tell him to suck on it. 

Small Cat - as we started to call her - was a perfectly adorable and immediately well-beloved member of the family.

She had some kind of adorable quirks. 

Dirt. She loved dirt, dry, fluffy, dusty dirt; she'd race outside to wherever there was a delightfully fluffy bare spot and roll in it until she was utterly and happily filthy. So she was thrilled when we started the excavation for the front walkway; the spoil piles were perfect.

She was a cuddler, a real lap-kitty. After going through a series of very cat-cats (when asked whether Drachma was a "good cat" my Bride thought about that for a moment and replied that he "was very good at being a cat.") it was wonderful for the Girl to have a loving kitty who would cuddle with her.

The only snake in Eden was the little one's health. The damn ear infections just never seemed to completely go away. Every so often we've have to clean her ears, and we had to make sure that after her dirt-baths we brushed her thoroughly. But she was such a dear and loving kitty we were happy to take care of her.

So it was concerning but not exactly an emergency when her ears started troubling her again this summer after about a year and a half in our home. 

We took her to our regular vet, who told us she had "polyps" in her inner ears, and recommended a special "skin vet" who could remove them surgically.

So one morning in August I fed her her pre-op pill...

...which turned out to be a kitty-cat Xanax, and it was worth the price of admission to see the little one experiencing what must have been a goddamn amazing cat-buzz, and off we went to the vet. They extracted the polyps, returned the small one, and sent off the polyps for biopsy.

One came back cancerous. 

We scheduled a visit to a cancer specialist in January.

Then right before Christmas the Girl called in panic. Nine's ear was bleeding again. A hastened trip to an emergency vet showed that the mass had grown back in her left inner ear.

After that the end came painfully quickly. 

We tried to get her in to see a kitty-cancer doc and couldn't until after the new year. Between the holiday and January 6th she developed a palpable swelling on the left side of her head and down her neck.

I put her in her carrier and took her to the kitty oncologist in January hoping, frankly, for a miracle.

The oncologist was fresh out of miracles.

I cried in the car on the way home.

We knew it was weeks and not months, but within a fortnight she was wheezing as the cancer invaded her lungs, and though her appetite was undiminished she could no longer swallow solid food. 

We called the people at Compassionate Care. The kind, quiet vet arrived late one weeknight. The small one went quietly, first into drug-induced slumber in the Girl's trembling arms...

...and from there across the threshold of the Great Sleep.

If I ever lose my day job I'll be able to make a living as a cat gravedigger; Nine's was the third (after Lily's and Nitty's) I dug in the backyard.

The small one lay in state on the table for an hour as I dug in the cold wet earth under the drizzle that seems to be a household tradition for burying our cats. 

A final drink of sake' and candles at her head.

We all cried again when we laid her in the ground and covered her little cardboard coffin with the clods of soil that will divide her from us forever.

I told the Girl, and it was the simple truth, that for all the cats I'd known since I was small little Nine was the sweetest, lovingest kitty I'd ever known, and I'd loved her best of all.

The Girl grieved for many days. During her mourning she found a little temple bell at our Asian grocery. 

She hung it over Nine's grave.

So now the gentle chiming of her bell still reminds me of how heart-full little Nine was, and how much we all miss her. 

Your time with us was so short, little one. I wish your warm, soft body still curled on top of mine. 

You had too short a time to be happy and beloved.

Life can be like that sometimes. I'm sorry.

We miss you.

Nine Gellar 2013?-2021

Eighteen

You're all grown up.

Now you're officially, legally, "grown". An adult. You don't need me anymore. You can do what you want, when you want to, and there's nothing I can do about that.

And that's hard. Because, first, you are and always will be my little girl. My baby daughter, my firstborn. No matter how old you grow. You don't remember my telling you this, but when you were, oh, something like fourteen you asked me when parents stop worrying about their kids and what they do, and I told you the story about Grandma Lawes and how she looked at me when I asked her that. Yep, about ten minutes after they zip us into the bag.

And second, because you will do goofy, stupid, scary, ridiculous things. You'll drive too fast. You'll drink too much. You'll fall for people who will be bad for you, or things that will be bad for you. You'll take dumb risks and fall into harm's way and - hopefully, if I and you are very lucky - you'll wriggle away through some special Providence or good fortune or pure dumbshit luck. And because you're "grown-up" all I'll be able to do is sit and wait and worry and hope.

Just like I did that day all those eighteen years ago.

What? No. Just something in my eye.

But now you're a woman grown. All those long years of diapers and lullabies and hugs and tears and drives to soccer games and quiet mornings and schooldays and hopes and fears have come to this.

Alone? No, no, never. You'll always have us, me and your mother. We'll always love you and care for you and care about you. We'll never leave you, even when you leave us behind.

Yes, lovie. You...what? Yes, leave us. You know you will. You already have. Yes. All those many years ago.

I know, I'm sorry, it's just that sometimes I forget how hard it was. Hard for us all. It wasn't what we wanted, love, was it? We came to that moment, and then instead of going home together you went on and we were left behind to miss you and mourn you.

It's still hard for us.

Because we never got to this day, did we?

We never got to stand here, you and I, with you all strong and young and full of hope and glory. And me, all full of love, proud of you, and hopeful...and nervous worried and scared of losing you to all that goofy, scary, ridiculous stuff. We never got to be father and daughter, never got to live through all those days and years.

You passed through our lives like a shadow fleeing with the sun, to vanish with the coming of night. To...how did I put it all those years ago? "Who ran on the tiny fleet feet that never learned to walk but which carried you swiftly, so swiftly from darkness to darkness."

And once again, I stand here, alone.

Every year. You're here, the hole in my heart.

Then gone again.

Yeah, this has been a long one, hasn't it? Sorry. Well, hey, it's not every day your little girl is a woman. You gotta cut your Da some slack today.

Because after this you'll go again. For another year, another and another and another and all of them, until I join you in that place where you've gone, that bourne from which no traveler returns, that place you have to leave for now. Yes. Now. It's time. Let's say goodbye so you can go. No, you're not too big to hug.

So.

Goodbye, love, Goodbye. I love you. Yes, I'll think about you, my big girl, my own. Goodbye.

I miss you already.

Goodbye.

Bryn Rose Gellar March 1, 2002-March 2, 2002

Happy Day, you Mothers

Funny how it never really occurred to me until afterwards.

But you were always there for us, even when we - well, I - were rotten little bastards. You loved us, cared for us, corrected us when we were wrong and praised us when we did right.

You were a classic Fifties corporate wife and mother, but at the same time you were your own self; amateur actress, teacher, social liberal, mentor, confidant. Cubs fan - my childhood summers will forever be narrated by the sound of Jack Brickhouse drifting out of the big windows on the sunporch where you knit and listened and cursed the Amazin' Mets.

You did all that a worthy person does; you lived an upright and honorable life, you raised your children to do and be the best they could do and be, and you died full of years and honor.

I love and miss you, mom.

Margot Carol McMillan Lawes, 1926-2018

The Transfiguration of St. Nittnatheus

Well, in the end, I think she went pretty well.

Remember how Nitty Kitty seemed determined to make her last days a sort of middle finger to "death with dignity"? Yeah, well, that was a thing, for a while.

But we took her to the vet, got her some medicine to help with the nausea and constipation, we made her get out of her litterbox and sleep on the nest of soft towels and a rice bag, combed the litter out of her fur, and otherwise tried to make her comfortable and happy.

She continued her round of alternating sleep with frantic begging for food, and climbing into unoccupied laps, and seemed to recover, a bit. She was still desperately stiff and creaky - the cat was about ninety-eight in people years, for Heaven's sake - but she got around as well as she ever had.

The weather let up a little, so she could enjoy her outside-time, something she very much loved. But, slowly, every day, she got a bit slower and weaker.

Last Friday was my company's "winter holiday" thing. Mojo and I went and had a very good evening, but we returned to find a distraught daughter and a very, very weak Nitty on our bed where the Girl had lifted her, having found her curled, nearly motionless, on a pile of laundry in the bathroom. Once on the bed the Nit was too weak to get up, and she had pissed herself and our bedlinens.

My Bride changed the sheets while I made up a soft towel-bed for Nitty, intending to move her out to the living room to the couch where she had been sleeping. I gently moved her, frail and as light as a memory, just fur over sharp bones, onto the towel, carried her out, and put her down.

And the Nit, true to her crotchety self, immediately go up, struggled up onto the television stand and laid down, ignoring my attempts to herd her onto the towel.

Even that wasn't right, because she flopped down to the floor, tottered over to my wife's sewing table, squatted down and pissed on a bolt of fabric that the Bride had left on the floor, and then shuffled under the table and laid down to die.

The whisper-thin remnant of her lasted through the night. Unmoving, barely breathing. I got up several times; she was still barely living at four, but, as so many others do, she fled before the light.

By Saturday dawn she was cold.

The Girl was inconsolable, wet-eyed and grieving all through the day. We went to the local stone seller and bought a flat marker and a little cup-shaped headstone. I dug a shallow grave in the sunny spot near the front fence that Nitty had always slept in when she was outside and the weather was fine enough, and we petted her goodbye, folded her in her cloth shroud, and laid her down. I gently put the cold spring soil back over her, and then her stone one top. We spend a few moments there, and then I had to go about my business.

I returned to find this:

Between them my Bride and the Girl had created this little shrine, complete with saints and flowers and offerings. I simply warned them that if the miracles occurred that they would have to figure out what to do with the pilgrims.

You were a funny little soul. Whether you were Cypress - the name they gave you at the shelter - or Francesca, the ridiculous name my Bride hung on you but that we never used - or Fat Nitty, from your early days as a glutton of all things cat-food - or just Nitty; morning crier, lap-cat, patient companion, quiet, gentle, and affectionate...you were a good cat. You died as well as anyone can; full of years, peaceful, surrounded by your home and those people who loved you.

You were not just a good cat, you were good company, dammit, and I'll miss you.

Seventeen

Seventeen years ago this day you left us.

To this day we are still bereft.

Your mother for the baby she never cradled, the life that grew inside her all those long, difficult months fled before you took your first breath. For her hopes, her dreams, her plans, all the things you were for her gone in a bitterness that she still carries within her heart.

For me it was today.

This today. Today the morning after your birthday, when I would have given you the keys to the old beater Honda, with stern warnings about driving with boys who had been drinking and parking with boy who hadn't.

This today, where we early risers would have shared silent coffee in a darkened house, your hair a tousled halo about your face.

All the todays that we never had; the fights and the cuddles and the excitement and the tears. The skinned toes and the algebra tests and the silly laughs and the midnight fears.

Slowly the pain and the loss has diminished, as your tiny spark of life fades with the years.

Today I can write this without crying. Today I can think of you as just a loss, a grief, the greatest of many, instead of a ragged hole in my chest where this day ripped out my beating heart and held it before my face to taunt me with the brutal randomness of life and death.

Today I miss you with a wet-eyed sadness instead of a huge, remorseless, tearing grief.

But.

That grief is still there, my dear.

That hole where you should be, young and strong and tall and alive, is still in my heart and will be until it runs slowly down and stops beating. The way yours did, this day seventeen years ago.

Goodbye again, my very dear. Goodbye.

Yes. I'll be here again next year.

I'll make the coffee; rich as joy, dark as night, and strong as love.

And I'll sit and sip and wait for you to come. And we'll sit and be silent together, until you have to leave again.

Bryn Rose Gellar.
March 1, 2002-March 2 2002

Sixteen

Hey, love. Come. Sit with me.

I miss you.

Well, I know. Yes, I miss you all the time. But this time, every year, I miss you a little more, because this was your birthday and birthdays are special.

No. I didn't get you anything. I'm sorry.

Well, sixteen is hard. You are not a woman grown but not a child anymore, either. It's hard to know what you like, you change so quickly. One day it was all sparkle princesses and ponies, then it seemed like just the next day it was CDs and clothes and new soccer cleats. It's hard for your dad to keep up with you, you run so fast now.

I don't know how you do it, as little as you are.

You are little, sweetie. Only one day old, dust and ashes all these years. The only place you grew was in my heart, and in your mom's, who hurts for you so much she cries out for you.

I miss you, too.

But I miss the you I never knew. The little girl frightened of scary noises. The busy tween. The rude teenager. And, now, the young woman, strong and sure, lit from within with promise, like a star, or a lighted window on a cold lonely night.

There's just this one night, though.

Your birthday, every year, when you come and sit with me. And that night, like every night I miss you, again, and wish I could kiss you, just once, before we have to say goodbye.

Yes, love. Yes, I will wait for you here again next year, my very dear.

Goodbye. Yes, love, I love you. Goodbye, sweetie.

Goodbye.

When I die choose a star
and name it after me
that you may know
I have not abandoned
or forgotten you.
You were such a star to me,
following you through birth
and childhood, my hand
in your hand.

When I die
choose a star and name it
after me so that I may shine
down on you, until you join
me in darkness and silence
together.

~ David Ignatow

Bryn Rose Gellar March 1, 2002 - March 2, 2002

Fourteen

I'm sorry I haven't thought much about you, darlin'. Between your little brother being a pest and a pox and a trouble, and your little sister being absorbingly adorable, and my worries and fears about my surgery I've been a little preoccupied.

I know, I know. I'm sorry. I know that's not right. Especially now; fourteen is a hard age, the real beginning of the time you would have spent fighting for attention, fighting to become your own woman instead of a child, or an appendage of your parents. You would want to know that your dad was minding you, but not too much. Parenting you would have been like doing good tactical reconnaissance; being there, constantly alert to the slightest of changes, while somehow never being visible.

And there's the whole "time and distance" thing, too. It's becoming more and more difficult to see you as the newborn you were, the baby who was never more than one day old, locked like a damselfly in amber into that day fourteen years ago when you passed us on your fleeting race from the darkness of pre-birth to the darkness of death.

Instead I see you as the young woman you could have but never will become, the daughter I had but will never have.

And I grieve for you as the past I will always lose, as the future I will never have.

Today I will be too busy, too worried, and too frightened to think much about you, and for that I will grieve as well.

But I will think of you, if only for a moment. I promise. I won't forget you.

My daughter, my dear, my lost one. Today I will mourn for you, again, dust and ashes these fourteen years.

Bryn Rose Gellar March 1, 2002 - March 2, 2002

Thirteen

Thirteen years gone
But still in my heart,
New like tomorrow,
Sour like the hurt of a stolen kiss,
Dark, like shadows of loneliness.
I recall...
I remember...
I still feel... I know
Everyday the presence of your absence,
I endure the weight
Of the emptiness you left behind,
Thirteen years but still...
Even now still
I, in the silence of every breath
Pray, even if...
Just for a few minutes with you...
Again.
I never got the chance to say.
I never got the chance to say I love you.

~ Ezediuno Louis Odinakaose

Bryn Rose Gellar

March 1, 2002 - March 2, 2002

Twelve

Now that you are ashes more than a decade the pain of losing you comes in wondering, this time every year, who you would be if you had ever had the chance to be.

You would be twelve years old this morning.

Would you be still abed, bleary and quiet?

Would you be up early, bright-eyed, chattering and happy and excited?

Would you be our serious little dark-eyed girl? Or would you be our rambunctious and energetic little tomboy? Athletic and fierce? Quiet and thoughtful?

What would you love? People? Pets? The wild? Books? Music?

Would you act with your body in impetuous haste? Or with the patient deliberation of your mind?

Would you be kind? Would you be loving?

Would you still be alive?

For if we learned nothing else, we learned from losing you that there is no tomorrow. Tomorrow is a dream, or a nightmare, or may never come, lost in a wilderness of grief and fear.

There is today, sometimes there is only today, and today is your day, the day you were born and the day you died, twelve years ago today.

We miss you, dearest, and we always will.



Bryn Rose Gellar March 1, 2002 - March 2, 2002

Ten

I'm here, sweetie.

What was it? Was it a bad dream?

Yes, I hate those, too. Even when you know they're not a really real thing, they're still scary. Here, let me wrap you up a little and I'll sit with you for a while and tell you a story. Would that help?

Okay, well, it's sort of an old story, but it's about you so I think you'll like it.

Ten years ago today your mommy and I were all excited because it was your birthday. Your mom was excited about today that day, but I was excited about tomorrow.

Your mom, who is a very much more sensible and realistic person than your dad, was excited because that day was the day you were going to be born. She'd carried you around for nine long months and she was so ready to have you come out and meet her. Being pregnant with you had been tough for her, and she wanted you to be born. She was ready to be a mom rather than a baby-carrier. She was ready to be YOUR mom.

I was more excited about tomorrow, though. Because I hadn't been able to do anything with you - you were inside your mom's belly and all I could see was the funny shapes you'd make on her tummy when you moved - I was so excited to be able to do stuff with you. Dads are funny like that - we like to do things; tell stories, and tickle-fight, and run and kick footballs, and scare boyfriends, and talk with you.

Yes, you, with that funny look in your bright button eyes, just like I'm talking with you now. That's the sort of thing dads like, and that's what was exciting for me about today-ten-years-ago.

So I went to the hospital all excited about tomorrow.

But tomorrow never came for us, did it, lovey?

Because something happened, and you never woke up like you woke up just now. Somewhere inside your mom's belly you passed from that darkness to another darkness, a true-life scary dream, one that no hugs and no stories could chase away.

So there were no tomorrow kisses, were there, little girl?

No nighttime talks, no bedtime stories, no tears to wipe away, no soccer games, no boyfriends, no tomorrows at all. Ten years of no tomorrows.

All that remains of you are gray ashes in the little urn beside my bed and this, these sorrowful nights when I dream that you sit up in the bed you never had, your dark hair all atousle from your pillow, your skinny little-girl arms wound around your knees and your eyes shining in the darkness as I tell you about the dreams I had that, as dreams often do, faded into formless nothings in the light of day.

Are you sleepy now, lovie? Are you ready to go back to sleep?

Of course you can give me a hug. No, no, I'm not crying. Just something in my eye.

Snuggle down now.

There. Alright, goodnight, sweetie.

Happy tenth birthday.

Sleep tight, lovie.

Goodnight.

Goodbye.

Bryn Rose Gellar 3/1/02-3/2/02

What Dreams May Come

from Brian Turner's wonderful "Phantom Noise":

Illumination Rounds

Will the girl find a bed among stones?
Will the fighter find a trench?
-Saadi YoussefParachute flares drift in the burn time
of dream, their canopies deployed
in the sky over our bed. My lover

sleeps as Iraqi translators shuffle
in through the doorway- visiting
as loved ones might visit a hospital room,
ill at ease, each of them holding
their sawn-off heads in hand.

Wordless, they wait for me
to dress in my desert fatigues,
my aid pouch with painkillers

of little help in sewing the larynx back,
though I try anyway, suture by suture.

-----------

She finds me at 3am shoveling
the grassy turf in our backyard, digging
three feet by six, determined to dig deep.
We need to help them, if only with a coffin.I say, and if she could love me enough
to trust me, to not cover her mouth
in shock or recognition, her hair lit up
in moonlight; if she could shovel
beside me, straining with the weight
each blade lifts in its gunmetal sheen,
then she'd begin to see them - the war dead -
how they stand under the lime trees and ash,
papyrus and stone in their hands.She stares at these blurry figures
in silhouette, the very young and very old
among them, and with a gentle hand
stays the shovel I hold, to say -
We should invite them into our home.
We should learn their names, their history.
We should know these people
we bury in the earth.

Orphan out of Carolina

I wanted to point you to a very good essay about adoption.

I've followed Lorrie over at Clueless In Carolina for years. She's that rare blogging combination of thoughtfulness and literacy that makes for genuinely good reading. She's hit a rough patch lately, and I hope things look up for her, but she's still a good read.

And her latest post was about adoption - her own.

I blog about adoption quite a bit. I have to; when a quarter of your public is adopted it kinda gets in your face. So it was painful to read;

"Today I realized for the first time that there is an unbridgeable gap between an adopted child and a person who can pick up the phone and call the people who brought them into the world and point to the bed where they were conceived. "I dread Father's Day," I told Roger tearfully. "I've lost two fathers."

And realize that there's really nothing you can say beyond that.

You know our story; we lost a daughter. Lorrie lost a father. Twice. Which is more heartrending, to lose the future, or to lose the past? I don't think that grief bothers keeping score.

I once wrote something about the effects of grief, and said;

"I realize anew reading "We must never limit the universe." from my friend's blog that what this old grief scar does do IS limit my universe. I'm perfectly functional, but I've taken the big wound. I can't ever again KNOW that something good is on the way. Because it was once and what arrived was pain and loss and sorrow. And nothing I could do - and I once foolishly said that anything that wanted to hurt my family would have to kill me first - was enough to stop the awful emptiness that still exists, a tiny universe of nothing but Dark Matter, in the locked room at the top of the stairs in the back of my head."

And now Lorrie knows that she, too, has that locked room where she can climb the stairs, and stand in the doorway, and see the face of Loss and say, welcome, old friend, old enemy.

Have you come to stay with me for a while?

I think you can sum up the entire business by remembering that every adoption begins with tragedy.

We Americans are especially bad at tragedy. We're the ultimate shiny happy people, and in a lot of ways that's a good thing. But not here.

I wish I had some words of wisdom or consolation for Lorrie. I don't. Some things are just pure grief.

The loss of her fathers, like all losses, like all griefs, can be softened by time and distance. As they are for all of us; the grieving parents, the harrowed soldiers, the bereft adoptees.But they will always be there, waiting, at the top of the stairs, waiting patiently to ask us if we want to sit with them on the top step and remember all the pain and heartache of the end of our yesterdays, and our tomorrows.