I have struggled since Jess and Maribella have died with the concept of faith. Being raised Catholic, I never felt comfortable with that train of thought and leaned more toward a paganistic spiritual kind of way. Ish. Since they have died it has vacillated between spiritual, agnostic, and atheism.

Last Wednesday at work, after a long, exhausting and emotional day, I was cleaning up.  Much was on my mind with the fires close by, the hurricane that just went through Texas, and the upcoming one, Irma. Then there is what is going on in the world. I had just written a patient a reminder on a post it note, and noticed something on the back of the next one.  I had brought these from home, who knows how long ago at this point. When the patient left, I flipped it over and found some “scribble” on it. Bells had done it. My heart stopped for a second. I do wonder at what point it will decide it has had enough and not start again from the heartbreak. That is another conversation for another day. It did start again, obviously, but I felt my feet go out under me as they usually do with the grief around her. Tears welled in my eyes as I sat there stroking that tiny piece of paper. I wondered when she had done it, was I working in my home office trying to keep her occupied as I often did while working from home?  Did she grab it off my desk because it was pink?  What was she thinking as she did it? I sat there and held tight something she had touched, as I often do with some of her things. It is the links I have between her and I from when she was alive, much like a person wearing a glove and you are holding hands. The glove is the link.

I sat there stroking and holding that little pink piece of paper for probably 20 minutes. I needed to go, get home to Fi and cook dinner, walk the dog, etc.  All those things that need to keep happening whether I am grieving or not. The tears barely came. A waterfall needing to happen yet not, because of a drought of exhaustion.

I posted on Facebook what happened, I call it my accountability in this grief process. Jesse kept so much inside, and I refuse to do it, because I know the consequences of trying to keep it all in. I want to believe.  I really do. I want to believe that she knew I was having a hard time, as her grief was close to the surface in all that sadness and contemplation with everything else, and she gave me a “gift.” That she is there with me. And to admit that makes me admit she is gone. Dead. And then the how. Killed. And then…then the never ending images of that night. So my brain does the only rational thing it can do, it denies the feeling of it all. I know intellectually she is dead, and that is as far as it goes.

I sit here writing this in my dining room, and I glance up at the urn on top of my bookcase. That is all I have left of my baby girl physically. Two braids of hair and ashes. And I feel nothing. And I appreciate that. I appreciate the mind and bodies ability to do what it does so I can keep on going so I do not have that nervous breakdown. I know it is in there and I know it is not healthy for it to be in there. But how can one truly deal? You have read over the past year, that door of grief for her, it only opens a bit at a time, and when it does, it is much like being outside in a hurricane or tornado, no protection for your heart. Raffi needs me. I can’t fall apart like that.

So, I remain torn when I see things like my little post it note. I am reminded that she was alive, so fucking alive and joyous and beautiful and kind and funny and smart and sassy and and and. And now she is not. And all I have is the memories, the what ifs, the what would have been and the post it note. Gift? Yes. Trigger? Yes. As it has been and will continue to be, complicated.