Loss

Photo by Amanda

I always try to find a title, and then start writing.  I sit and stare at the blank page, and feel overwhelmed at the possibility of what I could fill it with and then try to conjure a concise title that collects all of that possibility into a few words.  Or, sometimes, just a word.
Today.  I typed Loss.  What a word that is.  Forlorn looking on the empty white space.  The hiss of a future with pain as it lingers on your lips.  Loss.

I've been pretty fortunate in my life.  Loss was a word used in terms of a game, or a small misplaced item, occasionally my pride and sometimes I used it in reference to my mind, but I never felt the sting of it's bite until 2 years ago when I saw the footprints of loss in the eyes of my daughter, Alee.  My happy-go-lucky-world-is-my-oyster little girl lost a dear friend, Dawn, and in turn I felt the loss of my sweet daughters smile.  The loss of her quick laughter, her bright eyes reflecting an adventure was the tragedy to me, I hadn't know her friend, only knew of her, and felt the sorrow of a story I'd only heard and not lived.   My daughter had suffered more than anything I can imagine, for I've lived that fortunate life, and something dark grabbed the light that made my beautiful daughter whole, and she was left feeling something I didn't know.  Loss.

I drove from Minneapolis to Kansas City during a blizzard because I thought I could fix things.  The 7 hour drive took me 16, including a forced stop at a rest area when they closed down the highway because the blizzard was too dangerous to continue driving.  My daughter didn't answer her phone that night.  I laid in a cold car under the orange sodium glow of a street light, snow swirling around the windows as it piled around the car, and I prayed that somehow my daughter would have the strength to keep her faith and find that light that made her whole.

When I arrived in Kansas city, I found my sweet little girl curled up in bed at her friend Amanda's apartment, red eyed and holding a miniature pig that tried to bite me as soon as I walked in.  Laughter can cure so many things, but sometimes the loss is too deep.  We had coffee.  Alee and I.  Alee, Amanda and I. Coffee with friends, coffee outside, coffee inside.  Coffee with crepes, coffee with more friends.  Finally we could laugh a little and I knew I could go home.  I couldn't fix anything at all except a tiny little piece of my heart that held fear, so I just held my daughter tightly for a moment and took a deep breath and prayed for her wings to take hold in this dark place that I didn't know.  Loss.

That girl of mine has a wandering soul, and decided to leave the dark behind and travel to somewhere brighter.  She called me up and said "I'm heading west momma.  Something in my heart wants to be by the ocean and to climb some mountains."  "Then go west sweetheart." I replied.  Well, truth be told it included warnings and discussion of car repairs and tires and all of those things that moms say when their kids wander beyond their reach.  So she did.  She found new friends that helped her cover the hurt just a little.  She was distanced from the tragedy, and she started to smile again.  I worried but no longer suffered sleepless nights because my sense of loss had diminished, my Alee got the twinkle back into her eyes.

A year after her great Western adventure started Alee and I both got a dreaded phone call that her childhood friend, Amanda, had attempted suicide and was in the hospital.  We both started making frantic arrangements to get to Kansas City.  Beautiful Amanda, who had lived with us off and on during her teen years, who called me mamma Morton and knew she could walk in to our house without ever knocking, whom I had nursed when she was sick, held when she cried, and spent many hours on our front deck laughing with a big cup of coffee and eating some strange wholesome baked vegan concoction, yes, dear sweet Amanda died, while another "foster mom" held the cell phone to her ear and I said goodbye.

This is where I started to question faith.  I doubted God.  Not just his wisdom, but his existence.  I doubted salvation.  I doubted everything I'd ever been taught to believe.  And in the blink of an eye and a whisper, I felt it.  Loss.

It's been almost a year now.  I've lost 2 things this time.  My daughters quick smile has vanished again, but I know that it's there, just waiting for that sense of safety to reappear.  I know she will be ok, she is busy finding a new sense of normal in this crazy mixed up world.  I have also lost Amanda.  I have her clay tea mug sitting in the cupboard, and I think of her every morning when I grab my coffee mug to start a new day.  It has stopped hurting to see it sitting there.  I am now to a place where I understand that she is free from burdens I can't understand because she carried a loss bigger than I will ever know inside of her.  It sorrows me greatly to know that instead of sharing that loss in life where we could have divided and conquered the burden, she has shared an irreparable form of it in death, and now all who loved her carry its weight.  Loss.

I'm working on my doubt.  I think I'd fully turned my back on God for a while.   Belief  is wrapped up in so many things and the walls I had built around my heart are open when sometimes my mind is not, and other times my mind is willing but my heart is not.  They seem to coincide more often now, and I think that is a good sign.  In the quiet moments, in the darkness I have come to know, even just for a moment, I feel the warmth of faith.  Faith is the greatest thing to lose, I have learned.

We miss you Amanda.  We found joy, even in the darkness.