The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected.
~Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
Death has always been a huge part of my life. As strange as that sounds to read out loud, it is a fact I would never try to deny or hide. I stop short of saying death fascinates me, or consumes me, but I have spent a lot of time in the 5 stages of grieving for a soon to be 21 year old adult. Most everything I have learned about life since the age of 14 has come from someone close to me dying.
I 100% understand the Circle of Life. We are born to die and the fact of that matter is, we will all die. As sure as God had a hand in planting the seed that gave us our first breath of life, he also will have a hand in when we will take our last breath of life. Questioning someone's death does not mean I do not trust God, or lose faith in the promise of Eternal Life. Just as I have learned a lot about life through the death of those I love, with each passing I learn more about faith, my own, and in general how it works. I do not stop praying for one's well-being just because they have passed. I pray for their souls and I pray they are resting in the peace of Heaven that they could not, or did not, achieve on earth.
Many of my friends, especially those in my age group, have always found it creepy that when someone passes on from life on earth to a life of Eternal happiness I visit them where they are laid to rest. No one in my immediate family has ever been laid to rest in a cemetery. My brother Jordy, our friend Mikey, and myself, took my brother Joey's ashes and let them blow in the wind over the Atlantic Ocean. Jordy kept a few of the ashes and put them in a vial with the ashes of Jocelyn (our toddler sister who died), Jayson (our older brother who died) and the ashes of our mom when she died. When our 'dad' died, in prison, we had him cremated. We were allowed to put the vial with the ashes of the rest of our family in with him as he was being cremated. (My brother did this to protect us, "He will go to hell and the ashes of the family he abused for all these years will protect us from him." Not my belief at all, but as long as Jordy found comfort in that I wasn't going to disagree with him.)
The only place I can visit my siblings and my mom is in my heart. There is no where to visit any of them on earth anymore, but that does not stop me from taking time out of my day to pray for their souls. Since the death of my mom, everyone that I was close to that has passed has had the traditional funeral service. Visitation the evening prior to the funeral service with a procession to the cemetery, then back to the death luncheon. It has offered me a place to go visit and pray for their souls. I enjoy that, and I wish I could visit my family like that, but that is not an option.
I visit Gracie the most at her place of rest. Perhaps it's because I am still working on our book together, the story of her life in her words and the story of her death in mine. I work on our book daily, I am always reading the things she wrote, the things she dictated to me to write. The pinky promises we made, and the insight of one courageous eight year old girl, anxious to get to heaven and start her job as an angel guide. Visiting her at the cemetery, where she was laid to rest, is where I find the inspiration to keep working on our book. Her spirit motivates me to make the decisions I must in order to get her story right. I often take her gifts, to set near her resting place. Pink ribbons, little dolls, angel statues, and yellow post-it notes with a little message on them to her from me. "I love you Gracie", "I miss you Gracie". I've left cupcakes filled with angel cream, donuts filled with jelly, and other things she always liked to be treated with. Gracie is still very much a part of my life, even though she has died.
Recently a grave marker was set in place for Gracie. Two hearts that overlapped one another and a tiny heart that connects them securely. A representation of her mommy and her daddy, kept together by her tiny heart that loved more then you would imagine. A marker that clearly shows the future of her resting place where one day her daddy will lay rest to her right and her mommy will lay rest to her left. The circle of life will hold true one day for Gracie and her parents when they are all reunited beyond a breath of life. Until that day they also will continue to visit their daughter, pray for her spirit as they try to stay connected to her soul.
As Pinky Promised to Gracie, I have kept in touch with her parents, Bill and Annie. The three of us keep an eye out for each other. Some days it might be through a text simply asking 'how are things going ?" or 'I'm thinking of you'. The three of us always claim to be doing well, but we know. We know the pain is still with each of us and the love we had for little Gracie is stronger then ever. We know when we hear that little laugh, see that ray of sunshine through a cloudy day, that Gracie is still with us in a bigger way then when she was with us down here on earth. There is no hiding the sadness in our eyes, especially from each other. There is no anger amongst us for the little white lie we tell when we say we are OK.
Today I stopped by to see Bill and Annie, just for a few moments to give a hug and let them know they are still a huge part of my life. The kindness they have shown towards me as a stranger to befriend their dying little girl, and to let me walk her final days on earth with her, and them, has been unmatched in my walk on earth. The friendship that continues to grow between us is a gift Gracie gave us all when she exited earth.
I always sit in Gracie's bedroom, the one she redecorated to be the guest room before she passed so her parents would not have to decide what, if anything, they would do with it. I remember the transformation from pretty pinks and purples to browns and greens. When I sit in there I don't see the way it is now, I see it the way it was when I would visit Gracie at her home in her final weeks. The room where so many pinky promises were made. The room where I wrote down the stories Gracie told and wanted in our book. The room where she stood at the window and waved as I arrived with a big smile and waved when I left, with the same size smile. It pains me to sit in that room because I miss my little friend, but the memories she gave me from that room before she left are warm and heartfelt even to this day.
The closet has remained the same, and I know it always will for as long as Bill and Annie live in that house. I laugh as I look at the figures she drew of me and Jordy and Mikey and Joey. I was the fat one, the one you could hardly call a stick figure. I remember arguing with her that Mikey was the fat one and her telling me that does not count because he is shorter and if we stretched him out long he would be skinner then me. To this day Mikey and I stand side by side comparing our thickness, trying to prove Gracie was right, or in my case, wrong.
After I left Bill and Annnie's I drove to visit Ceddy, his ashes thrown over Alana's grave. I try to make sense of my anger towards him for leaving. I miss Gracie, but I know she had to go. There was no saving her from the cancer that overtook her tiny organs. But Ceddy, he didn't have to go. He was healthy and strong. He had so much to live for. He could have reached out to me but he chose to lie to me, hide his pain, die when he decided, by his own hand. I cannot let go of the anger so I can find the peace I hope he is in. I think about how he is where he wants to be, but not where his brothers want him. I think about what he did to them, he took away not just himself from their lives, but his mom as well. He doubled their sadness, their confusion, their anger. I cannot wrap my mind around his decision, as hard as I try.
I try to answer Adrian's questions as best as I can for not having the answers myself. I try to let Avery know he has to be the big brother now and Adrian needs him. There's no instruction book on how to carry on when someone you love dies. There's no guide to tell you that you are doing all the right things to move forward. There is no voice to tell you it is not something you did, or said, or didn't do, or didn't say that made him want to leave. There is no answer to the question about did he love me less than he did Alana that he wanted to go see her and not stay and be with me.
I didn't know Ceddy, and I know you didn't want me to know, but I will never forgive the friend in me that I wasn't too you in your time of need. You can say all you want in that left behind journal how you lied to hide, but the truth of the matter is, it doesn't matter. A friend, would have known, that a friend was in that deep of a hurt he didn't feel he had any other way out. A friend would have known. I should of know man, I should of know.
