Veronica

Posted on October 29, 2018 by Elea Lee

When I lost Veronica–as I was losing Veronica, I decided I had to leave a trail of words so she could find me. This was back before the bloom of social media, so the trail of words was newspaper and legal-document based with a book of some sort when she grew up.

If anyone asked me, I would say that loving Veronica and having to figure out how to survive without her was the single most defining tragedy of my life. Defining in that it changed me. Defining in that it may have made me a better person.

The days and the hours right after I lost you were hell–actual hell. I wanted to die it hurt so much. I missed you, but worse than that I knew you missed me. I hated not being able to tell you why I was not there–that it had not at all been my choice to let you go.

This forced me to pray in a way I had never prayed before. I prayed for people to stroke your hair and people to sing you lullabies. I prayed for people to do things to love you, because I could not.

And in the process I realized that this kind of prayer was a form of metaphysical bargaining–God send someone to love Veronica led to God saying who will you love in return?

I loved youth group kids for you

I loved refugees for you

I loved drug addicts and the mentally ill for you

The snooty

The cowardly

And the messy

For you

I loved strangers for you

I loved pilgrims for you.

And the people who worked the drive through….for years they all were you–my lost baby in the world.

Because for the last 20 years all I have seen around me are would-be Veronicas.

Because that is how God sees me. He sees me through Jesus, His beloved lost Son.

So when you are afraid to call, when I have no address to send birthday gifts or plane tickets I marvel at what you don’t know about the treasure of love I have for you,

my baby girl.

Fetal Position

Posted on October 23, 2018 by Elea Lee

Forebear all hymns, celebratory, solemn, or liturgical

Just wash the stuffed animal

Mammalian, maternal

Using sewn-on paws to clutch

a miniature version of herself

To her belly, too big for an ordinary machine, she curls without consent into

The grey plastic washtub

Fetal position

I think, anthropomorphizing

Everything

The Wedding Injunction

Posted on September 29, 2018 by Elea Lee

This is a box. Make 49 percent of it as nice as you want. (You will be lucky to have children there

And luckier still if you can survive what happens when they go)

try not to dwell on the made-up

World outside

Or how untenable it might be to try to keep all you hold dear

In a box.

Columbus Day Weekend 2009

Posted on September 28, 2018 by Elea Lee

You can forget that a baby had been born. Forget that your knees were never good. Forget that you had already started foraging for man-made bodies of water despite being so close to the sea.

Forget the pain that was to come

Just remember the anniversary, the series of tragic anniversaries

‘Cause you can’t have too many vacuums!

Posted on September 26, 2018 by Elea Lee

I think about all the things I would tell the boy about his own part in my story, the bloodbath of both the Cross and matrimony, who is and is not good enough, but content myself with vacuuming

In relative silence.

Sunday School for the Apostate

Posted on September 23, 2018 by Elea Lee

I see you, late morning perhaps, wandering in, sitting next to this quintessential Ordinary Guy. He looks sideways at you. Pushes your favorite mug of hot something to the edge of the table he made himself. So long ago it hurts. A permanent scars kind of hurt.

And all he says is with his eyes-

Listen.

Tara Stories

Posted on September 16, 2018 by Elea Lee

When my children have their birthdays everyone tells them their story–how the delivery went, first memories of the child, what we ate in celebration.

Your mom told me about your birthday. She was in the hospital for a some time before you were delivered because you were a multiple birth. She was so excited about you. You all were delivered (most likely c-section) around 33 weeks old.

You were each tiny and perfect from the beginning.

She was overjoyed by your birth. They told her she would need help since all of you would spend three weeks in the NICU before leaving with three identical apnea monitors. They said they asked your grandmother to help out but she said no.

So they call us. I was young and stupid. The other foster mothers were older women. One had fostered and adopted many children, the other had only your sister and her own grown daughters. They made up lullabies for her.

When we left the hospital together people mistook me for the mother and them for my supporting family. We explained this was not the case.

I did not get to know your mom until they told me they were taking you away. She fought for her parental rights, but the system was well rigged against her.

Sometimes she would call me. She told the most interesting stories. It is these stories I wish I had written down, recorded, preserved for you, best would have been recorded, in her own beautiful voice.

So you could hear them now. So close to her birthday.

Break Up Songs

Posted on September 16, 2018 by Elea Lee

Since I lost you I have developed a small bag of tricks to cope with grief. The best of them is prayer, others include running, swimming, mixed martial arts, and writing stuff down. I did not begin to write about grief until I lost the others as well….mostly because others had written about us.

At the time I wrote to judges, elected representatives, functionaries, dignitaries, and Hillary Clinton, and I still lost you.

The other tricks included comfort eating or not eating and pretending that all the cheesy break-up songs in the world were for you and me (because for some strange reason there are none for grieving foster moms, per se)

This is a part one-of-two letter, dearest Little One. Don’t make my mistake, start writing now. It will help a little now and a great deal later.

You have a story, beautiful Rapunzel.

Tell it.

17,885 (more or less)

Posted on September 14, 2018 by Elea Lee

Trying to escape the lie that there was another day that could’ve been–something with more walking, running, skipping perhaps, less pain, which you and I measure in numbers, whole or in pieces, because how could you measure it otherwise? The way you might

Measure a life in years, decades, fractions of things. We are all just fractions of things.

Kaleidoscope humans

Seen whole

Only from great heights.

Thou Preparest a Table

Posted on September 8, 2018 by Elea Lee

All day it has been set–the lovely flowers, the pristine linens, silver service, aroma of a meal wafting from bone china, but I do not know how to do this–how to sit to this table, how to make a banquet out of sorrow.

—Psalm 23, of course.

Carrying Light

Words for light

Category Archives: grief