So the American Girl company has been up to their bitchery yet again. This time? The Christmas catalog, people! The actual festive happy joy joy Christmas catalog! A smiling bright-eyed assumedly mentally stable young girl cradles her new doll with the crushed velvet red dress and matching hair ribbons. I ask, is this really necessary?
Why not just bring a bunch of closely resembled mothers and daughters to parade up and down my kitchen floor, dancing, and cooking broccoli cheddar soup together? Maybe throw in some inside jokes and laughter, a cat named Church, and the plotting of tomorrow's outfits and the weekend's plans? What movie will we see next? What book shall we discuss? We have all the time in the world, since we're just so alive and healthy, and take it all for granted!
Gosh, that felt good. Fine, I'm done. If the American Girl company is a sadist, than I am no better for continuing to allow them into my home. I STILL- 15 months counting- have not called or e-mailed them to get off their mailing list. And yes, I do realize that I wouldn't have to tell them exactly why I wish to be removed.
Still, I won't call. Why, asks someone out there far more logical and far more mentally intact than I? Because as much as I hate to look at the cover and remember what I've lost, I also love to look at the cover and remember Cory in her lounge pants, curled up on the sofa, "gettin muh girls' hair did" while we watched Gossip Girl. See the dilemma?
These feelings of bitterness and sweet are butted right up to each other, without a crack of light between them. This is where I live and breathe.
To get one, you have to take the other, like it or not...and that is the best explanation for coming to terms with the sudden death of your child that I can give.
And if you're not there yet, you're just not. You will be like me with my unopened cardboard package from none other than the mothereffing American Girl Company that has sat at the end of my dresser since the third day past the burial of my child. Inside waits a shiny new Josefina doll, just like the one I gave to Cory on her eighth birthday, although being brand spanky new, it is slightly different than the well- maintained but undeniably well-loved original than sleeps beside her under the ground.
I put it where she could reach it... not registering the fact that she couldn't reach it or hold it or seek comfort from it any more, as she had for years. I didn't think of how the moisture would eventually work its way in, seal be damned, and began to wreak havoc on all the precious contents of that pretty pink box. I also completely missed the point that Cory no longer needed said comfort any more than she needed the light of the ladybug nightlight I pressed in beside her still, rigid form, my trembling hand smoothing over the flowers of her dress- the prettiest shade of blue-, and lovingly running along her impossibly small waist encased in a belt that gave her a shape that made her smile and walk a little straighter.
She didn't need the light, and all batteries run out eventuallys...but my mind was far too broken to consider such logic. I was being her mother, which is all I've known since I can remember- my childhood and motherhood again butting up together without a pause between, but it was so, so sweet.
The idea of having my own Josefina to hug on the nights when I couldn't bare being without her seemed so right and so logical at the time. Funny how once it got to the house, I couldn't imagine looking on that doll's smiling face, knowing where the original rested. I couldn't even open the box. It may be that I even give it a wide berth when I pass by.
See how that works? You want the comfort, yet you push it away. You want to feel better, and you also want to be left alone to scream and keen for your girl.
Leave me to die.
Hold me.
They are equally felt and equally logical statements in my experience.
Why is grief not listed in the DSM-V?
Oh yes, Dr. Z, I've recovered quite nicely. Let's go have coffee sometime off the clock and really chat, why don't we?
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