Just a thought…
There are moments that the words don’t reach
There is a grace too powerful to name
We push away what we can never understand
We push away the unimaginable.
(Lin-Manuel Miranda, playwright, Hamilton)
We’re marking this day in a positive way.
She should have turned 34 today.
I could not put our feelings into words better than the Pulitzer Prize-winning Mr. Miranda. We just push it away…while somehow holding her close.
Yes, here we are on March 24th, not sure whether or how to celebrate a day that we remember clearly enough as one of the best ones of our lives, closely followed by her joyful wedding and the arrivals of our grandson and, as luck would have it, a granddaughter, too, four years after our daughter’s death.
How do you mark a day like this? You find your own way: sometimes cake, sometimes tears, sometimes a visit to a special place, or just carefully tucking yourself into the memories that aren’t sharp enough to cut.
For Rob and me there will be actual blood. We’ll be donating at a clinic that, fortunately enough, happens to be taking place in our little home town, coincidentally on Lauren’s birthday.
She loved to give blood and was proud of her record of donating as soon as she was eligible, again and again. We were proud to have raised a child who was aware of the importance of giving and sharing gifts with those she might never meet.
As you know if you live in loss, we do what we can to honour her memory. On our walk home today after the clinic we’ll pick up a slice of birthday cake and savour it together when we get home.
There’s not much more we can do – just hope somewhere she’s proud of how we’ve pushed through the unimaginable to live our lives with grace and strength, with vulnerability and compassion. A great loss opens the heart to the suffering of others and takes us out of ourselves. We give when we can, holding a reserve to protect our own hearts, and we go on. Because we are not in control of anything but how we react, accepting the lessons about what life gives us, and what life takes away.
And we find gratitude for Lauren having been the unimaginable gift she was, and still is.