day after memorial day

With Memorial Day being so early this year, there's almost a week between the day after Memorial Day and the 31st of May. I expect to stay fairly busy, but I did take today off work, and that's probably a very, very good thing. The way things have gone, I didn't expect to be as paralyzed as I am this year, but this is the best way I can describe it. It's hard to turn my brain off and not think about all the events of 4 years ago, and they're on permanent repeat. To me, the day after Memorial Day will always be the day we lost Ariana, regardless of the date. Part of that is constructed - it's always the holiday weekend, and we're always doing the same thing, and it will always lead up to that day of getting back into routine - except four years ago, the day after the holiday was far from routine.

Perhaps, as we've thought, these milestone years will be the hardest. I have loved watching pictures of my friends' 4-year-olds graduate from preschool and dance in their first recitals and play hard as summer approaches, and I have dreaded the time of night when my kids go to bed and I think about what should have been.

I guess the crux of the story is the same way we always tell it: "We had the perfect family. And one day, without warning, everything changed. Ariana was a happy and healthy 9-month-old baby until the day after Memorial Day in 2011, when she simply didn't wake up from her morning nap." She wasn't sick, and we didn't have time to prepare. We didn't get to say goodbye. We weren't even allowed the liberty of the first dark hours together due to the extensive police investigation into her death; we were separated, labeled suspects, and treated as though we were guilty. The details of the investigation are, thankfully, hazy on most days, but there are days, like today, when I relive every moment and every word of it.

And then we buried our baby. We were scheduled to hold a family reunion on Saturday, June 4, 2011. Instead, we buried Ariana.

In the very, very dark days following her funeral, we learned how to live without her and all her funny little quirks. You don't realize just how much such a small person can contribute to a household, and just how quiet a house can seem when one of its occupants is removed. We can both almost remember what it feels like to hold her, but not quite. Thanks to video and photographs, we can remember how she looked and how she sounded. Thanks to a fluke of biology, we can remember how she smelled, since we have a rose that smells just like her. Thanks to family and friends, we are able to talk about her as much as we want to, although we don't speak of her as often as we used to. She follows us from place to place, leaving signs in the form of ladybugs in unexpected places and climates, rainbows, flashes of light, and inexplicable music.

There is horrible, horrible grief today and many other days. There is no way to separate the pain of the loss from the horror of the events that followed her death. There are a million ways we remember her, that up until this spring, had lost their sting and were just happy memories. But today, it hurts so, so badly. We will never watch her waltz into her first day of kindergarten or take her first dance lesson or come home with her heart broken because someone wouldn't play with her. We will never help her prepare for her first dance or send her on a senior trip or watch her graduate. Ryan will never walk her down the aisle.

But in the wake of the paralyzing, gut-wrenching pain, there is hope, and joy. She was so, so clever. She couldn't quite walk, but she could reduce her brother to tears in minutes (she would wait for him to come into view and then slowly and deliberately put his toys in her mouth...and laugh). She couldn't talk, but she gave the best, stickiest, almost-toddler hugs. She couldn't dance, but she could shake her little chubby legs and butt whenever she heard Bob Marley. She couldn't feed herself with a spoon, but she'd gladly feed you baby mum-mums if you'd let her. She couldn't have known it, but she made it perfectly clear to me from the moment she was born that I wasn't quite the kind of mom I wanted to be, and she pushed me to get there. She was my best little buddy, and we were never apart for more than a few hours from the day she was born until the day she died.

We always say that the Ele's Place logo is so appropriate, with all its little hearts making up one bigger heart. We got to start rebuilding our hearts at Ele's Place, though they're still not whole. We just keep walking this path we're on, picking up the little pieces of our hearts that Ari left behind, waiting for the day when we can be whole again.

We love you, little bug.