It’s been a few days since writing and I haven’t really had any private moments in between travels and family over the last few days. I’m worried I may have lost my ‘touch’ because my fingers have been flying on the keyboard the last month and very little editing has been necessary before I’m satisfied with what I’ve written. I think it’s because I am processing, not imagining, not self-editing, not looking for beauty or cadence or a message. In fact, I’m trying to find meaning in something that goes so far outside the fringes of being able to make sense that it might as well be in another galaxy.

We are now in Madison, Wisconsin via Vancouver, a night in Seattle with my sister, brother-in-law and Dad, and a three and a half layover in Chicago O’Hare. Madison is Don’s hometown and a place of beloved refuge for us with Don’s sister and brother-in-law, whom we also count among our closest friends, hosting us. We will ‘winter’ here for a little over a week, to grieve with Don’s family and other dear friends, but more to receive solace and love and make yet another new beginning in a pivotal place for our family, without Emily’s physical presence.

Something I thought of on the airplane last night as we were flying over Lake Michigan – first over Chicago, then Milwaukee, and then over farmlands and small hamlets and onward to Madison – is this: if one is an atheist before losing a child, especially to the disease of depression or any other mental illness, the process of going forward without hope of a beyond would be unendurable. I challenge anybody in such an unenviable position to not change their belief system.

So…here I sit, in the sunroom with subdued afternoon light filtering through the barren branches of winter, colours and fabrics and carpets and coziness surrounding me, a cop of Rishi tea, yellow with turmeric in its clear mug, my ever-present tiger balm jar beside me, and a crocheted blanket and warm socks to wrap me more deeply than I already am in a hot flush of love and compassion.

I recognise I am not only receiving compassion from others, but I am gifting it to myself with these physical accoutrements along with much self-soothing in the form of stroking my arms, clasping my hands tenderly in a prayer of sorts, rocking gently – always choosing the chair that rocks as well. I’ve not always been so gentle with myself, so the giving and receiving of it feels profound.

It’s becoming easier to talk about Emily off-the-cuff, without always having a confluence of grief that follows the mentioning of her. As a family, we have committed to the importance of ‘saying her name,’ bringing her up in the conversation; we are beginning to do it now with a bit more ease, though it is in no way easy. We never know when the tears will come and for how long or how intense it will be in any given moment, but there is more self-regulation now from all of us. We are becoming accustomed to Emily in her memory-form and growing into thinking about her in her non-physical form, and how that can be a part of our individual and family life.

When we arrived last night and sunk into the haven of the basement here at Ellen and Kal’s house, where our family has stayed so many times with great joy and such welcome, there were immediate tears. The bed set up for Charlotte was always Emily’s bed, with Charlotte on the sofa. As soon as we descended to this space, always lovingly prepared for our family of four, we all felt the whoosh of absence, the multitude of memories, and the agony of knowing how this city, this house, this exact location, was one of Emily’s happy places where she was most content and comfortable and delighted by life.

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Cracking open again and again…every time we are with loved ones and those who loved and ‘got’ Emily: it’s an exhausting exercise. But we need to do it because we also crave communion with these folks. We love them and we share so much of the sacred in the reliving and remembering of our dear, dear girl.

There is the smallest smudge of hazy orange on the distant  horizon, an inkling that we may be moving into a place where we can celebrate Emily’s life rather than focus so intently on her passing. May this flight go fast. Wishing us Godspeed.