Tag Archives: bereaved parents

From Grief to Gratitude

Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops friendship bracelets around a photo of her daughter who died of leukemia being hugged by friends.Saturday was my daughter’s sixth angelversary. Angelversary is the name bereaved parents often use to gently refer to the date of a child’s death. It marks the day a son or daughter became an angel. Or the day they took up a heavenly abode. I’m still on the fence about heaven and where one ends up after life. And Marika was no angel. But these wretched anniversaries wreak a range of emotions. What bereaved mothers and fathers really want, besides having their children back, is to know their child is loved and won’t be forgotten.

The first few angelversaries I was immobilized with fear and dread, wondering how I could survive the day. Then there were years when I obsessed about exactly how to commemorate such a time: to turn off the phone and stay in bed, or line up back-to-back meet-ups with friends? To curl up and cry? Or celebrate Marika’s life with balloons and butterflies?

“I’m declaring a personal holiday,” I told a bunch of other bereaved parents last week. “I’m going to party and drink and do all the things she liked to do. I’m gonna be really good to myself. Cake. Chocolate. Hiking with my daughter’s dog. I’m going shopping.”

I was going to write about all those things. I was looking forward to barging into the day full force, like my daughter would, feasting on the beautiful free time to do anything I wanted. And then, first thing on the day of Marika’s sixth angelversary, I felt a desperate urge to grab onto my grief again. I needed to drown in sorrow. Feel pain. Cry. Maybe so I could remember how much I loved, and how much that love costs me still.

There was a box of Marika’s photos. The ones from her last years. I knew they would fuel a major breakdown. What I didn’t know was, after the deluge of tears from seeing dozens of photos of Marika being held and hugged in the middle of friends, how grief could melt into gratitude. It warmed me as much as the cocoa, the chili, and the good cheer I found the rest of that day among my own friends.

All the beautiful, wonderful friends. Hugs to those who keep me going. And brimful thanks to everyone who filled Marika’s life with love. She was no angel. But she was loved.

 

How do friends keep you going? How do friends keep you grateful?

 

REPLY TO ROBIN

How I Swallowed my Daughter

Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, swallowed her daughter who died, by Photoshopping multiple decorative borders around a photo.Almost five years ago on a moonlit night, I stood with my newly inherited dog in the driveway. It was the place I felt closest to my daughter who had died. Looking up at the stars, I whispered, “Marika, please stay with me.”

During the months before Marika was even born, I had watched the changing shape of my growing belly and talked to her, not knowing who she would be. Now as I spoke to my daughter, I watched the ever-changing sky, the creeping clouds, the moon turning from fingernail to half cookie to bright pearl to hidden promise.

At age twenty, Marika had written to her dear friend who died, “Because I got to live, you will too.” So she’d already set my direction for what to do when a loved one dies. She was going to “carry” her friend forever. Thus, I would “carry” Marika. That’s how I came to “swallow” my daughter.

People swallow pride, feelings, secrets and unsaid words, bitter pills, … mostly to bury them. But when I took in my dead daughter, it was more like “wearing” her from the inside out. I decided to be more like her, to dedicate a chunk of who I was to who she was, so that I might see the world through her eyes. This way it didn’t feel so much like a final separation. And keeping another’s perspective is useful in dealing with what life springs on you.

As it turns out, this is not so crazy. Mothers have been doing this for ages. The term is the only thing I invented. Since publishing my article, The Mother who Swallowed her Daughter, I’ve gotten responses from bereaved parents as well as the lucky ones. Cries of “I swallowed my daughter too,” and “I swallowed my son,” fill my email box. My own mother wrote, “I’m a mother of three female children and I have swallowed them all –each and every one — just as they are. Sometimes they give me indigestion….”

Anyway, at my most desperate hour, this was what I came up with to survive the death of my daughter. It was the only way I could imagine ever finding joy again.

“Help me be strong. Help me find the right words, Marika. What exceptional thing will we do tomorrow?” I say this often. In the driveway. In bed. In the kitchen. On hilltops and wooded trails. By the sea. In daylight. In the dark …

 

What have you swallowed? And how has it changed you?

 

REPLY TO ROBIN

Missing Children Photos

MarikaAgedFor the past two weeks, all over the media, an image of a little girl who was found dead in a trash bag along the shore of Boston Harbor has yanked at the hearts of more than 51 million viewers. Having lost my own daughter four years ago, I was mesmerized by the picture. Someone’s beautiful daughter, her riveting eyes. Thrown away. How could this happen?

The computer-generated image was produced by Christi Andrews at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Using autopsy reports, morgue photos, and stock images of facial features, Andrews constructed a digital composite that should come close to what the toddler looked like in life. Andrews selected a similar face shape, added eyes that matched the toddler’s in size and color, and filled in the features with stock photos. She likened the process to building a Mr. Potato Head.

Forensic artists like Andrews often include age progressions in their composites, modifying images to reflect the effects of aging, to show likely current appearances of long gone missing children. They use the same Adobe Photoshop program I use. When I investigated further, to learn how Andrews recreated the face of ‘Baby Doe,’ the child found near Boston, I made a discovery: many bereaved parents find age progression on photos of their deceased children to be healing. They use services such as Phojoe Photo in order to see what their children might have looked like as adults.

With all the photo manipulations I’ve done on my daughter’s image, aging her face had never occurred to me. What would Marika, who died before turning twenty-one, look like at my age, I  wondered?

On one half of Marika’s face I deepened her natural lines and then added from my own stockpile of wrinkles, sags, and age spots.

So now I have something else to stare at.

 

What images do you find comforting?

 

REPLY TO ROBIN

Signs From Dead Loved Ones

Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, Photoshops the raven design she made for Silk Oak, an Ithaca-based design studio“The blue heron was flying too close, right at me.” The small group sat around the table, taking turns talking about signs they’d received from their children who died: ravens that stared, the moon suddenly peeking out of a totally clouded sky, a butterfly landing and staying longer than it should, phone calls with no caller, a television that suddenly turned on by itself … I nodded in agreement. Yes, I’d seen that, I’d felt my daughter’s presence. But it had been a long time. I was sad, wondering if maybe my time for receiving signs was over.

The signs I’d gotten were different. Small notes Marika had written would appear at pertinent times. Like the Mother’s Day card I found in May last year. And her drawing of a rabbit, our favorite animal, in a heart with a speech-cloud that said, “Welcome Home Mom.” I’d found it just before leaving on the trip to Australia to scatter her ashes, and then placed it on the mantle by the front door, to be the first thing I saw when I returned home. Sometimes I’d be searching for something and a gift of Marika’s would surface instead. From the time she could hold a crayon, she’d been writing and drawing. During her lifetime, she and I must have stashed thousands of these things away. The “messages” kept popping up the past four years even though I’d long ago cleaned out Marika’s room and scoured the house for any signs of her.

The morning after the group meeting I was searching for my will. When you look for something, you always find something else, I should know by now. Stuck under a pile of papers was this:Signs From Dead Loved Ones, Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, finds a story created by her daughter Marika Warden, who died of leukemia in 2011

Farther and farther I went. I found my mother she went with me.
I went back up. I gasped for air. W[h]ere was I. I was on land! I am magic!
I am a beluga whale. I was just made. I looked at my creator for the last time. She was gone. I was falling deep into the water! I heard a soothing sound like a lullaby. I started swimming.

 

What signs have you experienced or heard about? Do you believe in signs from after death?

REPLY TO ROBIN