So back to Dr. Z's theory of the breaking plates...
I went to the eye doctor this past week and ended up spilling out the whole story when simply asked if I was on any medications. This is par for the course for me. If the Target check out girl says she likes the hat I'm wearing, I feel compelled to try to sum up the essence of my Cory Girl and my devestating loss before the next customer's turn. Bear in mind, these are complete and total strangers- nonetheless, I cannot tell enough people that I once had an amazing friend who happened to be my daughter.
So my eye doctor made a comment when he found out Cory was only nineteen. He said, "You know, I think when we lose a young person, we are really losing two people...
the person they were
and the person they were yet to become."
(Small breakdown in eye doctor's office happened here.) Poor guy, optometry isn't what it used to be, it's far more messy and emotional.
So three plates, Dr. Z (Sven is his first name, Cory had toyed with the idea of naming her first born son after him): One for my daughter, one for my friend, and one for the person she was yet to be.
My grief is not just for me and what I am missing about her not being here. My grief is also for what she did not get to have. Laundry list: diploma, college classes, job, boyfriend, driver's license, wedding, children, family.
She missed so much just because of her illness that I sometimes feel her development stopped at age 16, when the symptoms stopped being coy and just went in for the kill. How do you continue to grow socially and emotionally when you are in a state of low grade terror the majority of the time or so depressed you can barely move? You don't, which is why you will hear me say so often, she was never really nineteen.
I often think of what she did not get to do, and it makes me bitter. It is hard to see other girls her age just living...walking the mall with a friend, their cheeks rosy from the cold, some Ugg-like boots on their feet, planning nothing but their next excursion into Aeropostale, and what they'll text next to their latest crush. Why do they get that? What did I do wrong that Cory had to be punished at every turn? Who in the world has a three year battle with schizoaffective disorder and then gets hit by a car...fatally? Did I complain one too many times? It's like God said, you know what, Nick, it seems like this is just too much for you...you're too tired, you're too stressed...and I hear you, so I'll just take that right off your plate.
It is hard, hard work to either other people talk about their young adult children's jobs, classes, and love lives. Sometimes I just have to walk away. The hardest part is to hear people complain about mundane every day things like we all do. Because I am just sitting there thinking Cory will never get that chance...that chance to bomb the test, get up early for work, teeter totter back and forth on whether or not she should stay with the current boyfriend.
What I have learned to do, although I haven't liked it one little bit, is to recognize my moments when they come along- they are far different than I ever imagined; they are full of sorrow; but they are there. Want to hear one?
Before the art display downtown, I got her paintings framed and ready. I had been putting it off until the last possible moment because it just hurt too much. It hurt to go through them, it hurt to look at them, and it hurt to know she would not be here to see them hung. I listened to The Used while I set her paintings into frames with equal parts joy and despair.
As I turned each screw home, it suddenly occurred to me that this was my equivalent of buttoning up the back of her wedding gown. Such a shiver went up my spine. But it was true, wasn't it? Here I was, helping her get ready for her big day. I was happy she had found what she needed, but a tad heartbroken that it wasn't under my roof.
This art display would complete her. She wouldn't just be understood and loved by one man. As people saw her work,and her words, she would be loved by many people, and understood at long last.
As I set each frame, finished, to rights on the living room floor, and stood back to survey them, I was every bit as proud as I would've been to see her in a fluffy white dress dripping with lace. Who knows? Maybe I'll see that yet...there's always my dreams.
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