Sometimes grief is sharp enough that leaning towards imagination is the only way to weather it.
I don’t think I believe in angels (don’t even know what an angel is), or spirit guides, really, but when an innocent, complicated, vulnerable, adorable young girl is killed because of a car accident – which could happen to any of us, any time – I believe in things I normally wouldn’t. I lean towards the mystical because this is when the physical is to painful to look at through a literal lens.
I remember her blonde bangs that stuck to her forehead when she had been playing outside long enough to be sweaty.
I remember the way she shrieked, “Bean”, when my sister Hannah came home from work. She was one of the few people outside our nuclear family to call Hannah that; and Hannah loved it.
I remember the way she crawled into my lap whether we were inside or outside, regardless of the heat or cold.
I remember her breath smelled sweet and she had cavities that didn’t keep her from smiling.
I remember watching the ants with her.
I remember picking her body up, and swinging her around as she giggled and giggled. Even after I put her down, she’d giggle. She’d throw her head back, giggle, and tug on my hand, begging to be picked up and spun around again.
She left physical sensations with me. Her little soul was a light; her body a lighthouse. My sister and I were brave to put up walls around that light, in the small ways that we could. We are courageous in our loving; all love comes at a cost. I can’t fathom what happened in the physical car accident that took her life; I lean on my imagination to accept the reality of her transition.
Wherever she is, she’s happy.
The light of that little sweet-smelling girl with knobby knees and an infectious giggle is not out. The memories that my sister, her classmates, her teachers, maybe her friends have of her, are not all that remain of her essence.
Wherever she is, she’s whole, and she knows, maybe in ways she wouldn’t have known had she lived all her years, that she is valuable, endlessly beloved.
Her giggle is there in the whistle of whales off the Pacific coast. The way she threw back her head to laugh is part of what makes aurora borealis so beautiful. The day she died, those haunting green lights shown brighter.
Wherever she is, she isn’t here for the life that she deserved to have a full shot at living. In the stars, at least, no one can bully or harass her. In the stars she is free and fully brilliant.
How could she have died? is making it harder to breath right now; the question compressing my chest.
All I can answer with is imagination: she’s in the lightning bug’s glimmer, and when spring comes she will be there on the moisture droplets suspended in the air. She’s fully love, and now she is aware of her belovedness (as we all crave to be). She doesn’t need me and Bean anymore. She’s chasing God over the rainbow instead, and God is the only one happier about it than she is.
The only way I can grieve what my mind can’t understand is by allowing the line between what’s possible and what isn’t to blur.
R.I.P., dear girl Renata. Thank you for sharing your light with us.
heartbeatnomad 