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GUESTBOOK

We went to the flea market this past weekend. I was on a mission: we had been there almost exactly a year ago when I spied a treasure. It was this 3-D rectangular piece of solid, transparent glass. Inside the rectangle was a translucent glass figure. Some were patriotic figures--flags, eagles, the Twin Towers--and other were various everyday things--butterflies, roses motorcycles. And they had these little lighted, rotating stands you could place them on and the interior figure would shine irridescence. They were really pretty. A year ago, I found one with a hummingbird sipping from a flower. "I'm going to get that for Ginger for her birthday," I told Justin.

She died a little over a month later. She never made it to her birthday. I never got to give her the hummingbird.

Feelings, especially of grief, are an enigma, unique to everyone who experiences them, and they just have to be opened up and worked through as you go along. I have learned the hard way that there is no guidebook for grief. There are 5 basic stages: let's see if I remember--denial, bargaining, something or anger, something or anger and acceptance. But I see very clearly now how one goes through each of those stages many times on differnt levels before that final acceptance stage. I have done all those stages in my grief for Ginger, probably even the 'something' stage I can't recall, but as I combed the flea market this past weekend, searching for the gift that almost was, I got slapped with something: I am still denying.

I searched every space that carried the rectangles, pleading with each proprietor for a hummingbird sipping from a flower, and fighting back tears each time I was told that no, they didn't have one. I wanted one so badly, and when it was clear I would leave empty-handed, I realized why: if I found one and bought it like I regret not doing a year ago, maybe she would be here for me to give it to her. Maybe changing that one action of mine now would change the day we lost her, erase it.

I don't claim to be the smartest thing on 4 wheels, but I do know that I can't change the past, no matter what I buy or who I beg or how much I cry. But somehow, some part of me thought buying that hummingbird would resuscitate Ginger.

It's such a long road.

design by fergie

Bits of fire in the sky push me east back home. I used to live in flames but it's hard on the wings. Choke me. Smoke me. Scare me back. You try but you just can't. I peel the layers in my spare time, and you're easy to see through. I can fly, I've discovered on my own. I may be the lesser butterfly but my wings are just as strong. Who are you to tell me to find a place to land? I may be the lesser butterfly but baby watch me glide.