Sometimes, you hear people say things. Good things. Things that should go straight to your heart. But they don't. You write the words down, and then when you go home, the notebook with those words gets placed in the pile with the other notebooks, and you cook dinner and clean up and go to sleep and grit your tired teeth (teeth get tired! they do! when your baby is up at the top of every hour because she discovered that she is turning two and is too sweet for turning two. Her childhood is slipping away before her very eyes! she must do something evil and two-year-old like, before it is too late! something like waking up 5-6 times per night and making her mother and father's teeth tired! and gums. and legs. and nerves.) when your baby is up yet again and you stomp over to her crib in a blurry haze of exhaustion and never bring to mind the words in the notebook about raising children and What It All Means.
Then someone else says those same exact words. But this time, you cry. And your heart soaks it all up. Because this person who is telling you all about the job of raising pure beautiful souls just lost one of hers. A soul that was only here for 3 and a half years.
Rocheli, you lived and died for a reason. Your death seems to have been a horrible freak accident, but we know that there are no such things as accidents. You died to teach us about life. You died to teach the rest of us how to live and raise our children, and what the ultimate goal for us as mothers is: to treasure the responsibility that we have been handed and to treat our children with the same Love that has been shown to us when they were handed to to us in the first place.
G-d, please grant me the patience that I do not always have to see in my children the heavenly souls within their human bodies. And please help me to never lose sight of them. Even as they wake up hour after hour after hour.
Maybe it's not about terrible twos at all. Maybe she is just doing that to remind me once again of how truly blessed I am to have her--both of them--in my life.
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2 comments:
Beautiful. I so love the way you write.
What a tragic story about the little 3.5 yr old. You taught me a valuable lesson - thank you.
I await more of your blog posts!
Her death sent my whole neighborhood into a fog of confusion and horror. Finding the meaning behind it all as it pertains to all of us might be a way out of the fog.
More posts coming! Thanks for your interest.
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