The One You Can't Put Down

From: The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)

"A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world.

But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after - that's love by a different name.

She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she's gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock my the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks.

She's the one you can't put down."

Shattered

From my Facebook wall, my status updates of two years ago. I was so happy about life, love, everything – excited to go on holiday with my children and positive about the new year….

November 29, 2008
Alison is loving the charm and delight of serendipitous occurrences

December 4, 2008
Alison is following her synchronistic destiny and is so happy with where she is going to...

December 5, 2008
Alison is looking for a star lost inside a prayer for I have heard that the answer to love is there.... smile*

December 9, 2008
Alison is a very proud mom blessed with 3 most wonderful children

December 10, 2008
Alison is counting the days

December 11, 2008
Alison is in a happy space

December 12, 2008
Alison is so excited, I just can't hide it

December 14,
Alison is as sweet as my dreams

December 17, 2008
Alison is loving the things that life is showing me

December 27, 2008
Alison is wishing her wonderful daughter a happy 14th birthday today!

December 27, 2008
Alison posted 10 new photos

December 28, 2008
Alison is your girl :)) 


January 7, 2009 (at 7:47 am)
Alison ...to my friends who haven't heard the devastating news...my darling child died yesterday. Daniel is no more with us. Please pray for Hendri, Alecia and me.

Wrong

I want to repost this comment that Cathy has left on my previous post "Want Daniel" because she sees losing Daniel like I see it: the most wrong thing in the world and she sees how it is for me to live with this cruel injustice. She is right, it is hell.

Thank you Cathy for knowing and for letting me use your words as my voice:

I don't know how anyone is expected to bear it, how anyone CAN bear it. And yet life forces itself on somehow, even if we are only enduring it.

I so mourn that your Daniel is not in your arms. His pictures, his eyes - I always think, it is the most wrong thing in the world that your child has been ripped from you.

It reminds me of a C.S. Lewis quote: "The cold, unsmiling face of Hell." Daniel's death seems a picture of what Hell must be. I should say, of what Hell IS, because you are having to live through it every day.

I realize not everyone believes in Hell. All I know is, Daniel being taken from you has forced you to live there.

(This week, two more people mentioned that they didn't believe Daniel's death was as accidental as it is made out to be. They don't know each other and have nothing in common. But the reason behind their doubts was the same. Should I react in any way? I don't know. I also have the same concerning questions. But for now, I just close my eyes, try not to think, pray and hope with every fibre of my being that Daniel's death was an accident and that everything possible was done to save his life.)

Want Daniel

I feel so very very sad about Daniel since last Sunday (more sad than I have felt in a long long time). It is a terrible sadness because it is so clear and without hope. Just an empty reality that he will never come back, that life has continued for nearly two years, that I will probably never find the answers that I desperately seek, that I will never heal.

Soon it will be December and January - the months to remind me of all that I wish never happened.

Sorrow

From: All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy)
 

"She looked up at him and her face was pale and austere in the uplight and her eyes lost in their darkly shadowed hollows save only for the glint of them and he could see her throat move in the light and he saw in her face and in her figure something he'd not seen before and the name of that thing was sorrow."

Karma (Daniel died on a Tuesday)

Written by Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws for Parents is a book for parents who wish to raise children with values that create the experience of abundance as well as satisfy spiritual needs.

The 7 laws are:

1. Pure Potentiality - Everything is possible.
2. Giving - If you want to get something, give it.
3. Karma - When you make a choice, you change the future.
4. Least Effort - Don’t say no, go with the flow.
5. Intention and Desire - Every time you wish or want, you plant a seed.
6. Detachment - Enjoy the journey.
7. Dharma (the path of righteousness) - You are here for a reason.

It moves us beyond focusing on private triumphs and failures towards experiencing the fulfillment and success that comes from having some of the most valuable skills anyone can possess: the ability to love and have compassion, and the capacity to feel joy and spread it to others. .

Deepak Chopra offers profound advice on how to convey these universal truths to a child and how to embody them in age-specific activities. He follows an approach of devoting each day of the week to a specific principle, starting with Sunday being the day of Pure Potential where everything is possible.

Daniel died on a Tuesday, the day of Karma where we promise to explain right and wrong to our children in terms of how choices feel.

We teach them that by choosing actions that bring happiness and success to others, the fruit of our karma will be happiness and success.

We reflect on the law of Karma:

1. No debt goes unpaid in the universe.
2. To bring yourself love and happiness, do what you can to bring them to others.
3. If you don't see an immediate result to good or bad action, be patient and observe.

Look At The Stars (Yellow)

Dearest Daniel

You know how much I miss you and how I cry for you every single day. The pain I feel is not something I would be able to endure for years and years and years, that is something I know.

I wish I could understand what went so wrong that you had to pay with your life. Where was the disconnect between what I believed I saw in your father and the reality? 

How could anyone not care about our life? And as they didn't care for you why came and take you away from me and Neni and Lecia and all the other people that love you so much. Any of us would have given our lives for you, my Angel Danny, if only we had known. 

I love you more than I can say, more than I can express, more than I can show, more than anyone can comprehend.

I walk with you in my heart everywhere I go and I fall asleep each night imaging holding you in my arms. 

I feel your spirit.

Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And all the things that you do.
They are all yellow.

Your skin and bones,
Turn into something beautiful,
And you know
You know I love you so.

Namaste, my dearest Daniel. 

I see you. Always.

Mamma x x x

How We Live

From : Sputnik Sweetheart (Haruki Murakami)

"So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us--that's snatched right out of our hands - even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness."

Finding Me

I feel deeply touched by this beautiful drawing that my friend Michael did for me. We are on the same painful journey and feel a similar pain - Michael lost his son Luke around the same time that I lost Daniel. (Also see my post Luke's Army)

I cannot describe how much I still miss Daniel every day. My heart pains for my child and without end a thousand unanswered questions keep on circling through my mind. I wonder if I would ever find peace...

Bruised

From : His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass)

"She wondered whether there would ever come an hour in her life when she didn't think of him - didn't speak to him in her head, didn't relive every moment they'd been together, didn't long for his love. She had never dreamed of what it would feel like to love someone so much; of all the things that had astonished her, that was what astonished her the most. She thought the tenderness it left in her heart was like a bruise that would never go away, but she would cherish it forever."