6 Months

 Tomorrow, it will be 6 months since Hannah took her life. She was a daughter, a sister, a friend, and many other things, but since she passed, she is the silent plastic box in the velvet bag on my mantle, the home accessory I never wanted. I hate that she is in a plastic box.  It feels disrespectful.  I have been looking at urns online. It has to be the right but what is the right container for my daughter's ashes? When I try to figure out what she would have wanted, I wonder if she would not want to be contained at all, and the idea of finding the proper box or urn reinforces that unpleasant truth that she is gone.  

There is a darkness that is coming over me as I approach this milestone.  It is one of many such to come as time continues to move forward. Thanksgiving came and went, now this, then Christmas. New Years, Valentine's day, each with memories that come with them.  Thanksgiving we mindfully and carefully chose to "skip." She hated Thanksgiving's lore and its inaccuracies and felt that it further disrespected the Native Americans and lied about what we as a culture did to the first peoples of this country. She loved cranberry sauce, and that was her contribution to the meal. She happily added experimental ingredients every year: raspberry flavoring, orange liqueur, even vodka one year, orange zest, mostly with success.  Hannah loved to decorate for holidays.  I think she would be horrified to see the state of chaos that this house has fallen into in the last six months, but would be of help in trying to get it organized so that we could decorate pine cones with glitter or create a craft to brighten up the house. Her things, her brother's, are all over the house, some in boxes now. Most of the chaos beyond is mine - clothes and linens that don't get put away, bags of recycling, outer signs of inner distress. I find myself trying to take long slow breaths at times so that I can feel the air in a brain heavy with sadness. I know that I am not bearing this alone - the mere presence of my sons confirms this. Yet I feel alone, and when my son was crying yesterday after sharing the recurrent images of Hannah on that last day that he is experiencing as we come to this hallmark, I found sparks of anger welling inside of me. I feel like there are people outside of the door at my heart, which I guard against them. I was able to see that this was something dark that my son hadn't caused, and was able to be there with him, recognizing his need above my own pain. Yet, there are moments when a flicker of light appears: a card from someone I know letting me know they care. Words from someone 3000 miles away, not intended just for me, but that my heart was able to let in the light from. The part of me that wants to cling to the darkness and rage will not win. I love, and I am loved, and while I will never stop missing her, I will find a way to make peace, one flicker of light at a time.  The night sky is dark, but it is filled with stars, each one a sun.