As always, when an important Kalei event day draws near I spend time thinking about what this particular date means to me in my grieving journey. While every one of my child’s birth dates are bittersweet now, I am blessed with amazing friends and family who temper the bitterness by continuing to recognize this important day in my (and Kalei’s) life.
Other than Kalei’s 17th birthday, the one immediately following her death when I did not understand d-e-a-d and tried to host a ‘normal’ birthday party for her, year after year this event has been managed pretty much the same. First, comes awareness of what lies ahead…another birthday that can never be. Then comes the ever important regular universe acknowledgment of how old my child would be had she lived. After that I start to think about the cemetery visit and who wants to come to participate in the lighting of her candles once the sun sets and she can hopefully see them from heaven. What I have never ever done is allowed myself to think about who she would be, what she would be doing or how our lives together would look if she was in fact still alive on this day.
It’s not that this imagining does not try and sneak into my consciousness as her special day draws near because it very much does. Without fail, as soon as I Christmas is over and I start thinking about her birth date my mind wants to imagine her at the upcoming age. Up until this year, I would start to get panic attacks if I let my mind follow that line of thought too long. Well, that changed this year.
I don’t know if it was my Kalei dream and being desperate to see (imagine) her in an earthly way again or if it is finally time to take this little walk in my grieving journey. Either way, for a week now I knew I had to not only open my mind, heart and soul to this difficult task, but I was going to write a blog about how I imagined Kalei and my life would be right now if she was not killed that early August morning.
First, at 32 she is still so incredibly beautiful! Her dark brown hair falls below her shoulders, her lean little body is toned like a dancers and her exotic features — always mesmerizing — have softened, reflecting a maturity that was not there at 16. With a big smile on her face, she embraces me and says, “Hi Mummy! I have missed you! I love you so much!” And I reply, “Oh Sweetie Pie, I missed you too! I am so glad you are home!”
You see, in my little imagining story (much like I dreamed for her when she was alive), Kalei would have graduated from university with an arts degree. She no longer lives in Calgary but rather, utilized her dual citizenship and moved to New York or LA to pursue her art. I see a man with her but no children. I don’t know why I think that, I just do. Perhaps because when she was alive, I never once imagined her with kids or being a grandmother. Without that thought ‘seed’ to build upon it is hard to create that image now. And then, I began to struggle with what to put into the rest of the ‘what would Kalei be like at 32 years old’ story.
At first I pushed my brain to keep going. I thought, for sure we would have talked about what was going on in my life as well as hers. After all, we always talked a lot. Even as a teenager, she was astute and wise beyond her years, by now I must be relying on her council more and more. “What kind of things would we talk about?” I asked myself.
For sure Kalei would be fussing about me being alone. This did not take much imagining as the week before she died she said, “Grandma, I worry about what mom is going to do when I am gone. “ She knew that most of my life was wrapped around her and leaving home would leave a big hole in my world. Finding someone to fill that gap would have been a lifelong priority for her as she always displayed a protectionist attitude towards me over the years, even as a little girl. Okay, I said to myself, let’s run with that particular line of thinking. Maybe more story imagining will come as a result.
I visualized the two of us sitting at my computer, glass of wine in hand, giggling hysterically as we fill out an online dating form. She would be wanting to write something totally outrageous and I would be saying, “I’m not writing that Sweetie Pie! That is so not me…maybe you, but not me!” As I sit here typing, I am smiling just thinking about how this imagining feels. And then, I get stuck again! I soon realized I could go on and on imagining more about my life and how she could be part of that, I can’t do the same for her so the lure of the imagining lost its appeal. So I tried thinking about something more practical.
Again via visualization, we were in the basement going through her dance costumes and school mementos with an eye to deciding what she wanted to keep and what she was okay with throwing out or giving away. I couldn’t even get to the conversation stage with this one!
You see, while I have a lot of regular universe details from the past 15+ years and my 62 year old current life to build a story around, I don’t have that for Kalei. Without those details, there is not enough base data to create a story that feels, well, alive. Because I did not have those living building blocks for Kalei, I had to make up too much and it felt both selfish and hollow. I saw my life as real, but not hers. Once that happened, my mind started trying to back out of the whole process. Because it hurt more than it helped, I don’t think I will do this again. For now I have to be content with the odd Kalei dream, but on most days, I get to be with her in spirit only.
I will never be able to imagine her alive again, at least not real time or in an earthly way. I can however imagine the angel as she watches me light her birth date candles tonight. While it hurts, I continue to image she hears me when I pretend for just a moment and say, “Happy 32nd birthday Sweetie Pie!”
There is no doubt in my mind the Kalei’s spirit looks forward to this day—just as much as she did when she was alive. As I type this morning, I can imagine her saying, “Everyone, it’s my birthday! My mom is going to light my candles…you must come and see!”
