{"id":2312,"date":"2018-12-10T07:20:18","date_gmt":"2018-12-10T12:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=2312"},"modified":"2018-12-10T15:07:32","modified_gmt":"2018-12-10T20:07:32","slug":"keeping-light-shining-continuing-bonds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/keeping-light-shining-continuing-bonds\/","title":{"rendered":"Lighting the Night with my Dead Daughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Robin<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Stuck in the house. Alone, on a cold night. Just me and the life-size photo of my daughter on the wall. And I\u2019m imagining, if she were here she\u2019d trot downstairs in her tank-top and flannel pajama pants, saying, \u201cMom, what\u2019s here to eat?\u201d She would stand in front of the wide-open fridge, surveying its bare depths in doleful disbelief. Then she\u2019d search the pantry and every cabinet, eventually getting to the breadbox where she\u2019d find an almost full bag of marshmallows. The giant-sized ones. I\u2019d carried them all last summer, from one friend\u2019s house to another\u2019s, in hopes of convincing someone to build a campfire and make s\u2019mores.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMom, remember when it rained and we roasted marshmallows over the stove?\u201d I hear Marika say now, beaming mischievously like she\u2019s inviting me to play. \u201cWhere are those stick-things we used to stick in the \u2018mallows?\u201d She gets me tearing through the kitchen drawers until I find the shish-kabob skewers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOMG, Mom! You still have Hershey\u2019s chocolate bars here.\u201d She\u2019s giving me her irresistible pout-face that begs, \u201cCan we make s\u2019mores, Mom?\u201d<\/span>
\nI don\u2019t have any graham crackers, I tell her photo. But the next thing I know, I\u2019m holding a skewered marshmallow over the blue flame of the stove-burner anyway. It suddenly catches on fire and I frantically blow at the small blaze. When my heart stops pounding, I devour the gooey mass, black ash and all.<\/span>
\n\u201cMom, you\u2019re such a wimp,\u201d I hear her say. It\u2019s like hearing an old sweet familiar tune.<\/span><\/p>\n

I toast and eat enough marshmallows for us both.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo Mom, if we can do this, why can\u2019t we light Chanukah candles?\u201d<\/span>
\nIt isn\u2019t Chanukah, I tell her.<\/span>
\n\u201cThat\u2019s the best time to light Chanukah candles,\u201d she assures me, \u201cWe can light them all then.\u201d<\/span>
\nYikes, I\u2019m thinking. More fire. Hot. Hurts. All those memories. I don\u2019t want to remember that song you sang as you lit the candles. More pain. I don\u2019t think I can do this, Marika.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now she\u2019s smiling at me. In the past she would have grunted, and rolled her eyes. But she smiles, and sighs,<\/span>
\n\u201cLet\u2019s just light the effin\u2019 candles, Mom.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Who do you talk to when there\u2019s no one to talk to? How do you keep alive the best parts of yourself and the one you are missing?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stuck in the house. Alone, on a cold night. Just me and the life-size photo of my daughter on the wall. And I’m imagining, if she were here she’d trot downstairs in her tank-top and flannel pajama pants, saying, “Mom, what’s here to eat?” She would stand in front of the wide-open fridge, surveying its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1432],"tags":[1756,1754,1521,1187,1757,1755],"class_list":["post-2312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1432","tag-afraid-of-fire","tag-chanukah-candles","tag-continuing-bonds","tag-coping-with-grief","tag-missing-a-loved-one","tag-roasting-marshmallows-over-the-stove"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}