A year ago yesterday, my aunt Ruth died. I tried to write about it all day yesterday, and somehow never got past that sentence, which says something about how much I’ve managed to process her death. It’s just.. too much. A part of me feels like the balance of the world was thrown off with her death - it was the final proof that I needed that the daily struggle isn’t worth what we get in the end. (As soon as I write that, I know how disapointed she, the eternal optimist, would be. Not to mention that her faith was what carried her through the pain…) A year on, I realize that my mind is shielding my soul from this reality, not letting me feel it. It’s so easy, 3000 miles away, to pretend …
Well, crap, I’m doing it again, aren’t I?
*Blank stare*
In the last year, the number of times I have talked to my grandmother (who lost both of her daughters in the span of 5 years, both before they were 45) and my cousin (who is one of the few people in the world who may actually understand how angry and sad I am) is in the single digits. It’s not that I talked to them that often before my mother and aunt’s death, but any conversation now is admitting that we have lost links in the chain..
I just can’t write myself into the post. I’m not finding a way in, a point of catharsis. I can’t make this interesting or moving, because when I get close, my stomach knots, my hands tingle, I realize my breath is shallow and I have to back away.
In the last year, so much good has come into my life that you would think the balance would be restored - just my tiny daughter, who was named in part for her great aunt (Ruth Alice), should be enough.
But it is still not fair. I deserved to have one of them. My girls deserved to have a Nana, or a Momo. A Nana AND a Momo. They deserve both, and it’s not fair that they have neither. My mother and aunt deserved to know these beautiful little girls. We all deserved so much more. Someday I’ll find a poetic way to say all of this, but today it is just not fair. At all at all.
