Grief is ugly, messy, cruel and sometimes indescribable. The weeks are going by and I am slowly coming to term with the loss of my oldest daughter. So many people held space for me, sent cards, flowers, phoned, sent texts, and openly spoke of my loss. None could know the depths that complicated grief can reach, for me. None can know the depths of regret and sorrow, for me. This is my grief and it has taken weeks for it to become real. Now that it is real, I can attempt to find a way to make it something beautiful. I cannot name all of you and others who openly expressed their love for me and your enjoining me in this long walk through valleys of sorrow. I can, however, name those who one would think would send condolences of some kind, knowing me for most of my lifetime and yet could not reach out in these hours of one of my greatest losses. Funny how my grief has become so sacred that I am grateful that those who did not wish me well on this journey did not do so. I am learning to set those things aside and get the hard work of grief done.
I was able to stuff grief into a place I stuff wounded emotions that I cannot handle in one huge dump. I am grateful for my young friend who came and sat with me that first day. I am grateful for family that came without knowing who it was I was grieving. Those days with you here will be remembered as a time when you held space for me without realizing it.
I did not talk about my older daughter much. Some of my new family did not know I had an oldest daughter. What could I say? It diminished me as a mother for those who did not know the whole story. And I would never tell that. So, when I let my new family know that my oldest daughter had died, they were perplexed. All I could say was that we had a complicated relationship, that she was mentally ill, and that she always had to hate someone and I chose to have her hate me and save the rest. Of course, it didn’t. Everyone got their return and then back to me and so on. She went beyond the pale when she turned her hate on you. She did not quietly fume. She found ways to undo you as well as she could. My youngest daughter was always her other main target. How hateful she w to her, right from the beginning. JanaDee had been our princess. Then, when ShirRae was born, their dad said that the other kids were not to bug her because she was his princess. I remember the moment that was said. I saw the look on my oldest daughter’s face. So many secrets were kept. She divided the family again and again. I watched from the fringes and did what I could for her victims.
And, yet, I never shut the door on her. It was always open. She was on my mind…my prodigal daughter. And, today, every night, she come to mind and there is a great soulful howl in my soul that longs for her. My love was always unconditional and she could have come and even made one movement towards having a relationship with me again and it would be so. Mothers forgive easily. To forgive her would mean that I would, in some way, be unsupportive of whoever was her victim at the time. We need a full family circle where talk would be brutally honest. It was more than could ever happen. And so, I loved from afar. Each of my children, and their father, have been struck dumb with how to deal with her deth. Some choose their faith in their religion that helps them cope. Some of us turn to each other. My sons wrote beautiful council to me. A mother will take anything that will help to soothe the hurt. She has died. My love for her has ot.
My love is for that little girl, before she turned twelve and her Jekyll and Hyde personality came out. I loved her later, but that is when it got really hard and I did not have the skills, then, to help her. She became the ‘elephant in the room’. Her father’s way of dealing with her was to say, “Well, that’s Jana!”. I said nothing but tried to support the kids when it happened to them. I never told any of them what kinds of things she did to me when she was on a hate train towards me.
She became a fringe person in our family. She is now that missing person. She is gone. For some, a sense of relief, actually. The family is fractured. Most likely, her name will not be said. Gone is gone.
As a mother, I will grieve all the things that she would not accept. I have a great deal of love for her and will openly give it now…now she cannot refuse it. I openly forgive her. I openly ask for forgiveness. I will grieve, honestly and openly. No more holding back my love, my ability to see beyond and know the why of it all. Her death has altered the whole family. I was the mother who cherished, adored an loved my first little girl wholly an honestly and openly. I can be that, openly, again.
I love you JanaDee, your Mom.
Much love always
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