Story telling

"The pressure of unspoken grief is like that inside a pressure cooker - it builds and builds until one feels as though another tiny increment of pain will drive one mad.  Speak. Tell a friend. Tell another friend, or the same friend again.  A wise friend will know one must tell this tale again and again."
 I am learning as August fades, so does the memory, keen awareness to others that Phoebe has died.  It's part of the grief walk, that as the months pass, the year mark approaches, we find ourselves surrounded by just a scattering ...those who remember and live the loss with us.  I don't suggest that's a bad thing ...it just is.  People's lives move on, they have their own families, their own jobs and tasks ...their own life to embrace and live.  And we do too.  But it is all changed ...even if on the outside it doesn't seem so.  Only a very few want to hear the story told again.  It is one of the secondary losses of loss ...that we drift away from people we believed closer ...people we thought would stay ...and don't.
I do, we do, have friends who have stayed.  Though they don't experience the loss of Phoebe the same way, they find themselves examining and experiencing her absence, her death, in deeper, richer, even sadder ways.  That's how real loss moves through us ...it seeps.  I see the one's it seeps into ...and I am grateful for their asking, their listening, their attempt to understand what my life is like now. I have a good life ....too many blessings to count.  But I also have an extraordinary daughter, one who really and truly did not live the cookie cutter life, didn't fit the profile of a "perfect" kid.  She was her own person.  She didn't tow the line, didn't 'yes' us to keep us quiet.  She challenged and pushed and pulled ...and for sure, there were moments when Phoebe pushed every button I have all at once ...but I have yet to meet a child that could dazzle the world like her.  I have a few friends who knew her for all this, watched all this ...and they have stayed.  They still hear the story ...and every time they do ...its fresh and new.  While others have grown quiet, and seemingly, openly forget that I've lost a gem ...I am grateful for the one's who've truly stayed ...who truly watch for my other kids, ask for them ...and for me.  They know the tension of watching our next daughter in line follow the steps Phoebe took four years ago, as she starts her high school life.  Tender, precious, vulnerable moments for her ...our family too.
  I have a lifetime of storytelling ahead of me ...and it will always include Phoebe.  Phoebe's death is the spine of my story ...one I will tell for a long, long time.  I'm grateful I have friends who care to listen ...and sometimes even, tell it back to me.

Eternal rest grant unto Phoebe and may perpetual light shine upon her.  May she rest in peace. Amen.