The battle of heart and mind
Sometimes the hardest part of losing someone is the coping with the normalcy that comes afterwards. It’s the battle of the heart and mind; the heart longs to feel and remember and hold close, the mind wants to rationalize, find order, and meaning, and closure.
Last week, Dan and I were working through the basement, discarding things that were old, broken, or unusable. It was time to pass on some baby things – including Isla’s car seat and stroller set. All three kids have used it, and it’s now over 8 years old. It’s outdated, probably dangerous, and objectively disgusting…the damn seat straps were covered in mold. But when I opened the van doors and saw that car seat in the pile of broken and discarded crap…boom - heart takeover, I just couldn’t stop sobbing.
I remembered Isla’s warm little body in there, snuggled up and napping on those glorious excursions out of the hospital. It was where she sat when we walked her around the courtyard at Children’s, where she rode in the car, victoriously, when we left the hospital for the first and only time. I remembered the day she got discharged, sitting with her in the stroller with the car seat insert at the front of the hospital, waiting for papa to bring the car around to pick her up. I remembered Mother’s Day 2013, when her sats were low and we took her back to the hospital for “a quick peek” that turned out to be the rest of her life. Sitting in that car seat on the way to the hospital, Isla ripped out her feeding tube - an act, I wondered, that might have been in protest.
All the memories flooded me and I thought of one of the Toy Story movies that chronicles the strange places where all the old and discarded toys end up, long after the kids that lovingly played with them have grown up and left the house. They end up in a box in someone’s attic, on a dusty shelf in an antique store, or in the trash. I wondered if another child might be able to use this car seat, this precious little cradle that kept my babies safe for as long as it could, and felt actual despair at the realization that probably no parent would put their kid in this decrepit, waaaay used seat covered in mold. This precious relic of my past, something that had held my baby as closely as I had, one of the last physical remnants I have of her that served a concrete purpose - it was moving into the past more quickly than my heart could handle.
My rational, minimalist-leaning brain started shouting amongst all the emotional chatter “it’s just a thing! It’s just a thing!” and as I sat there ugly-crying, Lorenzo entered my tunnel vision, standing in front of me with his hands on my shoulders, echoing “Mama, it’s just a thing. It’s just a thing.” My rational mind cleared her throat. It is just a thing. A moldy thing that has been in my basement since Leo outgrew it months ago. I knew it was there, but I didn’t actively think about it. Sure, there are ways I could keep a part of it - I could cut out a non-moldy piece and make a shadowbox or something - but that’s not the point. It’s just replacing something meaningful and complete and purposeful with something smaller, more removed, and another semi meaningful knickknack to lug around.
Standing there looking into Lorenzo’s little 5 year old face, his big brown eyes wide and forehead scrunched in concern, I repeated my words back to myself. It’s just a thing. It’s not Isla. Moving the physical memories of her out of my life isn’t important….the important part is paying attention to the reaction that my heart has when I do it. Looking at those moments of grief and resistance as a little grin and a smirk she sends through the ether to remind me how petty the objects we have in this life are, and how the love we have for the people and the memories overshadow anything I can physically take with me. I hope my children and the people I leave behind feel the love I have for them long after I’m gone. I started to imagine Lorenzo cleaning out my house in 60 years and finding a nasty old toothbrush of mine, clinging it and sobbing “it was in her mouth! This object touched her every day and kept her teeth healthy! I can’t let it go! This was PART OF HER!” and started to feel my heart soften and as I began to laugh.
The wave receded, my heart relaxed, my mind was satisfied, and I snapped a picture of the boys standing next to it.
