Moving Forward

So….several months after Mandy died in 2006, maybe March or April of 2007, we made the decision to turn her room into an office. Although we had already given away many of her clothes and packed lots of other items away, it was extremely difficult to pass her room and still see her furniture sitting there, unused. We found a young friend whom she loved to take her bedroom furniture. We repainted her purple and green walls to match the rest of our house, and we bought some lovely office furniture with a distressed red finish and redecorated the room in red and black. We had Mandy’s letterman’s jacket put in a shadow box and hung it up, along with some fantastic pictures of Matthew playing baseball that we had been given by dear friends. We purchased a beautiful, double door library cabinet in which to display not only things that Mandy had loved, but also various items we had been given in her memory in her favorite colors of purple and green. Over the past 7 years or so, we have added memories from the Rose Parade, pictures from Mandy night at the football games at CHS, etc. and everything in this cabinet has been about Mandy.

On a side note, I doubt that this is unique to me as a grieving person, but I find it incredibly difficult to touch Mandy’s things. Clothing is the worst, but honestly, almost anything that is connected to Mandy is likely to bring tears if I have to touch it. Consequently, that library cabinet has been touched very little over the last few years; I just find it so painful that I open it only when I absolutely have to do so.

Over the past couple of months, I have become aware that perhaps a change is in order. While I have struggled with this idea and have not been entirely happy about it, I do believe that perhaps the Holy Spirit has nudged me to make another step in the journey forward. Understand, in this mother’s heart, I will never truly let Mandy go; no mother ever really lets her children go completely, and death has little bearing on that fact. Yet, the time does come when you realize that hanging on to the visible signs of a person’s life might no longer be healthy for you or for others you love. Over the holidays, I began by putting away many of the photographs of Mandy still on display at our house. We put her beautiful tree (made by her friends) in our backyard as usual, but we did not take a Christmas tree to the cemetery this year and actually didn’t even go over there through the holidays. Then, a few days ago, I spent the afternoon tackling the cabinet, aka “the shrine”. I pulled everything out and forced myself to look it over, assess its value as far as being kept or disposed of, and then divided everything up into categories: continue to display or pack for storage. I managed to reduce four, 4 foot shelves down to a shelf and a half of items to continue to display; the rest were boxed up and put in storage and some things were even thrown away.

Knowing in my head that this is the right thing to do has little effect on my heart. In my heart, I have betrayed Mandy. I have reduced her life to the contents of a box and put her away. While I am aware that those who knew her won't ever forget her, I am also aware that "out of sight, out of mind" is very much a reality, and if I put her things away, it feels as though I am relegating her to a distant memory, at best. Not matter how much my head tells me this is right, my heart will forever scream that it's wrong! Even now, there are so many people that never knew Mandy and don't even know that she ever existed. The majority of my co-workers have no idea I have more than one child, which feels so wrong. Those who have heard me speak of her know only what I share and never got to experience the joy of truly "knowing" Mandy personally. For a parent, or honestly, anyone who has lost a loved one, I think this must be one of the most painful aspects of dealing with that loss. Attempting to convey from your own thoughts and memories what a person was truly like is virtually impossible. I can’t make you understand how she made me feel, how angry she made me when she rolled those eyes, or how wonderful it was that no matter how angry or upset she was she still said she loved me at the end of every phone conversation.

Despite all those conflicting feelings for me, time marches on. There is nothing that can bring Mandy back and there is no possible way to help anyone understand what it feels like to let her go. It hurts…..all day, every day. It affects every aspect of life, and as hard as I try to keep that from happening, it seems inevitable that it does. A piece of my heart is gone. That piece can never be replaced and every milestone in life that comes along accentuates the hole. Matthew got married and she wasn’t there to see it. Matthew is going to have children that will not know her and she will never get to love. David and I are going to grow old and Mandy won’t be here to help Matthew deal with all of the inevitable decisions children face as their parents age. Thank goodness he has Caroline, but it is not the same as having a sibling to bear that burden. Mandy’s friend are marrying and having children at breakneck speed, and none of those children will ever experience the joy of having someone like Mandy to love them. Even while I am doing my best to truly live in and embrace all of those moments, enjoying these wonderful milestones with and for Matthew and others, the joy felt with them doesn’t take away the bittersweet ache that comes with Mandy’s absence.

I owe so many people a debt of gratitude that I can never repay for their continued love and support over these past 7 ½ years. Perhaps the most important of those people are the ones who stepped in to help us support Matthew at a critical time in his life, when I could barely get out of bed most mornings-especially Caroline, who was willing to step into the craziness and become Matthew’s best friend and biggest support when his mom and dad were too consumed with their own grief to remember his. Certainly, David, who has in the midst of his own grief and pain supported me so lovingly and so well. The people at Tennessee Donor Services, who have allowed us to remember Mandy through the Rose Parade and other ways with such generosity. Larry Rains, a stranger to our family, who took the time to learn the story behind the wooden cross Mandy’s friends erected at Windrock and has made a point to make sure it continues for many years to come to be both a symbol of her life and a reminder to all who ride there to be cautious.

I have always wanted Mandy’s death to “matter”, for her death to have value and meaning beyond being just another life cut short by carelessness and poor decision making. Certainly, being an organ donor matters, especially to her recipients. Her story has caused some who would never have considered being an organ donor to make the decision to do so. I have heard stories of others for whom her death was a wake-up call to change the direction in which their lives were headed. Personally, Mandy’s death has made me more conscious of the pain of those around me. It has given me a desire to minister to those who have lost a loved one, to be able to say to them, “you are not alone.” I have led a small, informal grief support group for several years now, and led a different group this past fall at Central Baptist called “GriefShare” that is continuing to support each other. This is my way of saying thank you to those who have loved and supported me and to pay it forward, so to speak, as best I can. Our society is ill equipped to deal with grief and grieving people, which seems so strange since all of us experience loss in our lives. My goal is to share my experience as you journey through yours, and perhaps together we can make the path a little less lonely for everyone.