A Note To My Emily

Oh, my Emily. I miss you beyond words. The grief that we feel is unimaginable. I just want to grab you and hold you and never let go. This morning I watched a post on my memories from Facebook with you and Charlotte singing The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow and it just took my breath away. I had to hold my heart and let the tears flow. As soon as I told your Daddy what I was watching, he began to cry too, just having the memory. Such joy. Such absolute, pure joy. You had a lot of that. You threw yourself into everything - and when you were happy, you were on fire.

I love how you and Charlotte loved each other so much. How much you loved her and looked up to her. How she made you laugh and how you came out of yourself when she was such a clown. How you gazed at her with unabashed admiration and how at the same time you were just so uniquely you. 

I also so clearly remember the day you two became friends, not just sisters. You’d been with us a few months already and you were busy gaining weight and eating all the fruit in the house, all the time. You’d wake up and shout, “Xiang jiao, xiang jiao” and we’d ply you with bananas. We had to hide the fruit bowl on the table because you’d eat everything in it, if you had the chance. You were busy finally getting strong after a year in a horrible orphanage just hanging on. Just hanging on. We saved you, dear girl and you knew it. You were so appreciative. You never took that for granted, but that year defined you. That year without us. It nearly took you under several times and then it finally did. I am so sorry for this. Just so sorry.

Back to your friendship with your sister: you were both under the big oak table in your tuktuk Thailand pajama-shorts and suddenly we saw you two just laughing and rolling on the floor. I don’t know what happened, but that was the spark, the connection that brought you two together and bonded you. We have it immortalized in a photo and I am so grateful for that. I think we shall frame that and smile every time we see it. It’s the most joyful moment I can imagine.

The day we met  you, you just mewed like a little shy cat. There was no other sound. But you ate an entire loaf of Chinese brown sweet bread in that roam in the Gloria Plaza hotel in Nanchang, China. Your little fists grabbed that bread like it was manna from the heavens and you mewed for more. Charlotte fed you a bottle of formula and you slurrped it greedily. Your Daddy and I just gazed on you, not believing the miracle of having you in our lives.

What a privilege it has been to be your parents these 17 years, dear girl. I will always be your Mama and Daddy will always be your Daddy. We cannot stop loving you, adoring your, admiring your efforts, and grieving the fact that you are no longer with us. I speak only for myself because your Daddy is maybe not there yet, but I do not blame you for ending your life. You were caught in some kind of pain that we cannot even imagine. Sometimes I think of the expansiveness of the grief I am in now, and I remember that you sat with an intensity of pain like this on a regular basis. And that’s what gives me compassion for you and forgiveness. I am so very sorry that you could not escape from that often enough to breathe with freedom.

It’s clear to me that you had incredible joy very often in your life. We watched you in action: your passion, your curiosity, your friendships, your laughter, your sense of humor, your playfulness, the rich, imaginary life that you had and shared with a precious few who know who they are. What a gift you gave us all through your too-short life, Emily. How blessed we have been to know you and  harbor you physically and emotionally. What a privilege.

We often wonder if you had been able to hold on just a little bit longer, let that cerebral cortex grow just a bit more, find the correct correlation of medication that could calibrate your serotonin consistently, just a bit more experience with the ups and downs and how to ride them - this was our wish for you. Oh, how we wished that and still do.

But if wishes were horses, we all would be kings. 

It feels good to write to you right now. I will probably share this with others because I know you will want me to. You’ve made it clear to me that my mandate is to share my grief journey, and to use your life and your passing as a way to help others heal. I hate that. I would rather have found my voice through any other means, yet somehow the loss of you is what has propelled me to write and talk to others. 

And so I will continue to do this, in honour of you, and also because you seem to be insisting. You are one of my most compelling reasons to go on, even though you are no longer here. How can this even be?