Things

I had never heard of keeping a loved one's fingerprint before.  My cousins got together, and arranged for it to be done.  When they told me about it, I could scarcely contain my joy.  To have her mark, her unique marking with me always?  What an incredible treasure.  I asked further into it right away, wanted to be sure I found every way to make the most of this opportunity.  What is better than one precious photo of your dead child?  A hundred.  What is better than one precious piece of fingerprint jewelry?  As many as I could carry away, obviously.

Was this reaction a typical example of  the anxiety that has driven me to  "collect"  handbags in every hue and fabric?  Or was this something more?  Maybe some weird survival instinct burning deep in my chest every time I realized that if I'd had an extra container of chili powder in my spice cupboard, Cory would be here right now.  Stock up, stock up, stock up...beats the rhythm in my head, sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously, but steady and relentless, either way.

It would seem, when I think back, that my first solid action after I realized a funeral home had indeed retrieved my daughter's sheet covered body from the road, and would not let me see her until they had "done some work" was to go buy her the last thing I remember her asking me for.  I asked to be taken to the store to buy her the stuffed Hello Kitty she'd spied just days ago.  I also bought her beads for her Pandora bracelet.  I bought her earrings.  I bought her new underwear.  I bought her perfume that I wasn't sure they would use, but hoped they would because she loved to be told she smelled good.

I... shopped.  Sitting here, now, over a year later, I shake my head, and try to figure it out.  Like what did I think she was going to do with all those things?  Why did I feel I needed to buy them for her? 

That's easy enough.  Cory and I were poor, okay?  We were, and it made me feel inadequate, especially when I only had myself to give her, and not the mommy/daddy/doggy family like the one in her Barbie dream house.  I took great pride in providing for her. Being a young mom was scary, and more than anything I was afraid of not giving her enough.  As I grew older, I slowly realized what she craved most was free, but I still had that deep seated desire to give her everything that I could.

After the accident happened, someone eventually got me off my knees.  I stopped puking.  I disjointedly but successfully planned her day.  I have looked back at the stages of grief a half dozen times, and wondered if I simply skipped over "denial".  I knew she was gone.  I had seen.  And with what I had seen, there simply wasn't room to question.  Was I ever truly in denial?

Well, based on the fact that I continued to shop for her, steady and unwavering, as if in a rush to fill her Christmas stocking-  yeah, I think maybe I was.

This shopping that began with a stuffed Hello Kitty went on for well over a year.  Thousands of dollars later, I try to figure out just what in the heck I thought I was doing. 

Here's what I've come up with:
every object that I bought was placed in between me and the pain.  Bright, shiny buffers...every single thing.  I swathed myelf; I booted myself; I adorned myself.  I made myself smell good; I moisturized; I covered myself in every fabric known to man.  I think of all the clothing, hats, boots, purses, books, trinkets, candles, and the like and try to imagine them in a single slightly wavy line.  How far would they stretch?  That depends...how big and how forgiving is your imagination?  Miles, my friend.  Sick, debt-inducing miles.  All with one basic behavior at the core:  avoid the task.  Or delay the task.  Or these last few months, at least, soften the task.

The more objects I bought, the more things I had to manage...physically, in my hands and in my home, and in my mind.  The more "things" required my attention, the less room I had left to look the truth in the face.  See it.  Smell it.  Breathe it.  Cory was never coming home.  I would never see her again.  To think about it for longer than a second was to risk my very sanity.  Sometimes, it still is.

At the end of walking those long miles, picking things up and setting them down again, I am just exhausted, but I am still loathe to turn my attention to the task at hand.  Who goes willingly to the blade?

Accept.  Accept it, Nick.  You lost her.  It's real.  There's no waking up, this time.

A lot of my shopping I regret.  Here's one purchase that I don't:

Mark, the sweet and kind funeral director called me in when her fingerprint charm was ready.  He sat me down on one of the little settees, and told me about fingerprinting my girl.

 He said, "When you reach out to touch something, which hand do you use?  Your right if you're right handed; left if you're left-handed.  But then...what finger?  Your pointer, of course.  That's what you use to touch something you see or are being shown."  He paused here, and put out his own finger to demonstrate.  "So that's the finger I printed.  I did it carefully and I took my time, because I know how important these lines and whorls are.  There is no one else's just like your daughter's.  When you miss her, you will be able to reach up and touch this piece of silver, and feel her finger right against yours.  No one else's.  Just distinctly hers."

He was right.  On the worst days, I place it around my neck, and it's my touchstone all day long.  Unlike all my other purchases that put distance between me and the reality that she was gone...this one somehow brings it closer, but gently. 

It comforts, but it's honest.  The finger this imprint was made from was cold and hard, and would never reach for my hand again.  But it was hers, and it had been held in mine more times than I could count.

Sometimes instead of needing to know the nightmare is indeed real life, I need to know that the sweet dreams happened, too.   Every hard, silly, crazy, scary, laughter filled, tear streaked moment of nineteen and a half years...all captured, per se, on a disc of silver, in the spaces between those lines and whorls. 
What we had.  What she was.  It was real, and I refuse to give it up.  It is priceless.