Oh, Jealousy!

Here's the thing.  I'm still jealous.  I'm so jealous I sometimes can hardly stand myself.  It's no more pretty of a look than it has ever been.  These milestones are kicking my ass.

I am so happy to see the young people in my life growing.  Each time they step out a little further on a branch, testing the weight...some cautiously, some no holds barred.., I imagine Cory in the same scenario.  It's involuntary, I promise you.  I see Cory in so many typical life moments that will never happen-things you take for granted that you'll get to experience with your child.

I look around at my sisters' kids, my friends' kids, Cory's friends, and I imagine them all.

Look at Cory taking classes at the local college.  You've got this, girl.
Look at her a little married lady with a husband who grins in the face of her open bossiness and banters back at every turn.  He adores her, clearly.  And he should.  She's rather amazing.
Look at her moving into a place of her own...any place...small, big, cheap, fancy.  Anywhere the sun shines through the windows and you can hear the rain on the roof.  Anyplace she feels safe.  Anyplace she can call her own.  Around the corner or across the country...just so long as I can still hear her voice.
Look at her with a hand on her belly, a little Momma in the making.
Look at Cory working part time, full time,  or staying home with her children the way I'd always wished I'd had the chance to do.
Any of it or all of it would be just fine.

What happens is that I watch the others moving steadily forward, morphing into these incredible young adults, and I wish she was here to see them, to know them, and to move along side them.  If her pace were slower, that'd be just fine.  I just wish she could see what an amazing father my nephew has become.  I wish she could see the nurturing little creature my niece has turned out to be.

Somehow, the stars have aligned that a nephew and a niece of mine are buying their first houses  at the same time right now.  It's beyond surreal to think either of them are old enough to do such a thing.  Yet here we are.  It's exciting and crazy, sort of like when three of Cory's best friends were all pregnant at the same time.

My niece told me a few days ago how hard it is to be so excited about her house, but know Cory will never set foot in it and flop down on her couch.  It sobered me to think these changes are hard for the others to make as much as for me to watch.  Then she said this, "It makes me even sadder that Cory doesn't know who I am now.  I'm such a better person than I used to be."  Well, damn, Alisha, if that doesn't make a girl cry, I don't know what will.

So my jealousy is alive and well.  It is what it is.  I envy every scrap of experience Cory will not have.

However...
I'm wrong to think everyone else is moving along while she is stationary in her plot in Bedford Cemetery.  That is faulty thinking, my friend.  I can feel her moving.  She guides me.  She guides her brother.  Every once and awhile, she changes people's thinking that have never even met her.  Since the day she was born, that girl has propelled me forward.  And since her death, well, she's pushed me gently with those beautiful little hands of hers into discovering strength I didn't even know I had.

I am so focused on the labels she was cheated out of:  graduate, worker, wife, mother, that I am negating all the things that she had already become.

She was an excellent teacher to her little brother and to me.  I learned things from her perspective that aren't taught in college classes.  Jake said he showed her how to do so many things, he was at a loss to pick one, but the big things?  Those were easy, he said.  "She taught me how to be nice and to be a good friend."
She was an artist.  She inspired me to create and it has remained one of my best coping skills.  It has literally kept me alive.
She was a quiet and wry observer of human behavior.  I found this line on a page of one of her journals, months after making her biological father's acquaintance:  my father knows not how to parent.
That girl.  You hardly knew whether to laugh or cry.
She was generous with her love and quick to forgive- just ask the men in her life who failed her.  She was persistent, even when things were hard for her to do.
 She was brave.
She was so many things that some graduates, employees, wives, mothers, and homeowners may never be.

I remember seeing a meme on social media recently that said no one's gonna talk about your shoes at your funeral.  I thought to myself, they damn well better!  After I stopped giggling to myself, I reflected on why would be so important to me.  Am I so shallow?  I guess it's about the fact that the way I dress expresses my individuality and that's really the piece I hope people remember.

 So if I want my footwear choices to define me...why can't Cory's sweetness, her humor, and her strength define her?  Does it really have to be a degree, a job, the acquisition of property, the representations of independence, or any other milestone?
Maybe what is most important when we're gone is how we made other people feel while we were here and how we affect their decisions in the future.

If that's the case, Cory's impact...
was and remains significant.
 I have to stop letting my faulty thinking sell her short.

Cory died doing a normal thing.  She died doing an independent thing; as small as it was- it was also a huge sign of her wellness.  Is there a better milestone than that?

Trigger, anyone?

I saw a hat lying in the middle of West Michigan the other day.

A baseball cap.

Not bloody.  Nothing around it to suggest something untoward had happened.  Probably somebody had lost it out the window of their car goofing around.

And yet.

And yet, the images began firing up in my brain as my throat closed in and chest tightened.

My own feet clad in purple sandals clapping the pavement furiously.  Getting there at the end of my road and craning around against the bright sunshine, unable to see anything  at first and wondering if this kid had his story straight..  Then spotting a throng of quiet, uncomfortable, helpful, sad, curious people trying to drag a kiddie pool over to block the passers by from seeing...

ohhhhhhh.....ohhhhh nooo, oh no Cory Girl.  It is her.  It is. 

Trying to get to her but being politely intercepted and held gently but firmly back from approaching her where she laid splayed to the side of the road, facedown, hair covering her face.  Looking small.  Looking not quite right.  Something about the angles did not seem natural.  Looking very, very still.

I am her mother. My name is...her name is...she is nineteen.  Yes, she is allergic to Bactrim and any sulfa drugs.  Yes she is on medication.  They are.... Yes, we live ..... Yes, she lives with me....

"Let us work on your daughter.  Let us help her."

 The fear that dropped into my belly as I watched them turn her over...it was hot, liquid, and oozed into every nook and cranny of my soul.  She has to be okay. 

They turned her over so slowly, so carefully, seemingly inches at a time, maybe even reverently, maybe they already knew what I did not...her hair covered her face, her eyes were closed, and her lips were blue.  A dark blue.  My voice took up my heart's chant, "Is she breathing?  Is she?  Is she breathing?   Someone tell me!"

No one answered.  Instead they sliced her shirt open with shears and I jumped and rejoiced in my heart, for they were going to give her the paddles and it would be ok.  As I waited breathless, the paddles did not appear.  Someone brought a box thing, they hooked her up, they went back to the ambulance.  I kept waiting for the paddles, wanting to wash her legs which were dirty, wanting to stop looking at her arm twisted all the way around like a pretzel but unable to pull my gaze from it.  Shouldn't somebody be tending to that?

And that was it.
Six reluctant words later and it was done.