time does not heal all wounds
It sneaks up on me every year. I know it’s coming. I know it’s going to kick the shit out of me. But I’m never really prepared.
I wake up on the tenth of October and realize it’s been another year. Fifteen years to be exact. Fifteen years and it is still just as painful, still just as difficult to believe, still just as horrible as it was that day.
It doesn’t get any easier. It doesn’t get any more bearable. It doesn’t get any better.
On October the ninth I dropped my daughter, Mayree, off at school for volleyball practice. She hopped out of the car laughing and leaned into the window. Bathed in a halo of sunlight, her hair pulled up in a pony tail, she glowed like a golden Mona Lisa. Like an angel blessing her loved ones she bid us farewell.
I don’t remember if I told her that I loved her that day. I don’t know if she ever knew how very much I loved her. I should have told her every single day, every single time we parted. But I don’t know if I did or not.
After volleyball, she called to let me know her friend Dawn was going to give her a ride to work. I was relieved I didn’t have to drag the babies to the city. Around eight thirty that evening her step-father said he had told Mayree she could spend the night with Dawn after work.
I started to call her to tell her she couldn’t spend the night with Dawn. A little voice in the back of my head whined, “you never let me do anything. Every weekend you find some reason to keep me at home. I never have any fun.” I put the phone down. I’ve regretted that decision every minute since.
Around six-thirty in the morning, on the tenth, a police officer knocked on my front door. I thought the neighbor had complained about the dog barking again. I had been awake for a little while and there had been no barking.
When the officer asked if I was Mayree’s mother my first thought was that she had been arrested. But the police don’t come knocking on your front door when your seventeen-year-old is sitting safely in a jail cell.
Around one in the morning, on their way home from work, they ran out of gas. They hitchhiked to a gas station. They didn’t call anyone for help. They didn’t have enough money with them to rent, or purchase, a gas can. The clerk gave them an old metal can from the trash. The can exploded on their way back to the car.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” I asked the officer.
“Yes Mam, we believe she is,” he replied.
The girls were the same age, same size, same coloring. One had died instantly. The other had been heliported to the burn unit at Children’s Hospital. The police had no way of knowing which one was Mayree.
After the officers left the house, I called the morgue. Not the hospital. The morgue.
I asked which girl they had. The medical examiner answered, “I’m sorry Mam, we have both girls now. The other girl died around six.”
Mayree was the one that had died instantly.
For fifteen years I’ve thought of my life in terms of the day before, and the day after. Every day, every memory, every detail of my life exist in the day before, or the day after. The day before Mayree died, my life wasn’t perfect but it was so much better. Every day after her death has been just a little less perfect than it could be, just a little less happy than it could be, just a little more painful than it used to be.
I didn’t want to be one of those women that people look at whispering behind their back, “she has never been right since her daughter died.”
No one can be right after the death of a child. You can never be the same. You can survive. But I don’t know how.
I’m amazed every day that I’m not wrapped in a little white jacket, rocking back and forth, in a little padded cell. I’m amazed every day that I don’t fall into a million pieces. I’m amazed every day that I can breathe in and out without my lungs collapsing and sucking my entire body in on itself.
About six months after Mayree’s death my mom went through a mental crisis. During that crisis she said Mayree came to visit her all the time. She said Mayree talked to her and she told her to do things.
A few days after her death I had a dream that Mayree came to visit me. She crawled into bed with me, put her arms around me, and told me everything would be all right. I woke up and told everyone that Mayree had been there. I didn’t say I had dreamed she was there. I said she had been there.
I had felt her crawl into that bed. I had felt her arms around me. I believe, even now, that she was really there.
If I ever end up in that little white jacket, in that little padded cell believing Mayree is there with me, then just leave me alone, and let me stay there. I’d rather live the rest of my life in the day before.
