Treasures

My last short post I announced that Michaela's FB page had been restored.  Hurray, good news!  But...as I expected this was probably a programming error.  It is a mixed result at this time.   The notes and the videos are still there.  The conversations and status updates are gone.  Anticipating that would happen, I spent that entire day cutting and pasting her notes, our friendship and then her own page with all of her status updates.  What a treasure to have.  A literal day by day accounting of her mood, her thoughts, her conversations with people. 
I started copying her pages and got back to December of 2009.  I couldn't do any more, I had to take a break from it.  I wanted to continue sooner, but I was also a bit afraid to.  After the initial rush of excitement and the frantic copying, there was a huge let down and an enormous emotional toll.  Imagine if you possibly can, after 18 months of nothing, to be bombarded with memory after memory after memory. Overwhelming.  Wonderful, but draining.  And, in the end, as a very new, but already dear friend of mine said, 'in the end, you still don't have her.' 

I even tried not to read as I was copying, if you can believe that.  I wasn't there to dwell in the memories, but only to copy them, to keep them, to have them for someday, to know they were still there if I wanted to read them.  But I couldn't stop the words from jumping off the screen either.  'Hey mom!  I love you!'  'Mom, you're profile picture is so oddly elegant.  I am so excited to be like you.'  'I love my life.' 'I love my brother.'  From Italy:  'The phone rings. Who do you want it to be? ::My phone doesn't ring. I don't have one here. But if it did I would WANT it to be my mommy.' And the mundane:  'Mumzy, would you make me a hair appointment with Song?'  Each line bringing a specific moment into crystal clear focus.



By Michaela (remember my blog about Circles?)

 Anyway, I am lucky.  I am blessed.  I have a lot of treasures that a lot of people don't get to have.  Michaela wrote journals for her entire life.  They are private and they are personal and I will never know exactly what was in her head at the time that she wrote some things.  I have only glanced through them.  It is too hard to dwell there either, partly because she mostly wrote when she was sad or down or had something on her mind to work out.  She drew and made art leaving me everything from doodles to masterpieces.  She wrote poetry.  She loved to be in front of a camera and would ham it up for a video.  Hours and hours of video from when she was a little girl.  Snippets of video documenting her life at college.  Songs!  Videos of herself sing love ballads and rap songs. 

She wrote notes to me.  I didn't keep them all.  I wish I had kept more. She often wrote when she had something she wanted to discuss with me, but was having a hard time starting the conversation, things she struggled with.  She would write the note, hand it to me, and sit down to wait for me to read it so we could talk about it.  They weren't a way to avoid a conversation, they were a way to start one. These I don't have any longer. 

But I kept some.  I keep them in my nightstand. She wrote me long notes on Mother's day for the past few years.  Each one documenting her love for me and the way that I raised her.  Each one talking about specific lessons she learned from me.  Each one listing specific things she loved about me.  Each one talking about her hopes for herself in the future.  These I kept.  I thank God for that.  They bring me a great deal of comfort and peace.  I do read these notes fairly regularly.  They remind me that she loved me and she knew I loved her.  They remind me that she was happy and that no matter how unusual our life was, she loved her family unconditionally.

Only one note I kept was not from Mother's day.  It was written on Dec 31, 2008, after what turned out to be our last Christmas together.  It was 2 pages long.  It is the best gift of all. 

"I don't think you understand how much I LOVE visiting home.  ... I feel so warm and comfortable and just peaceful here ... It's home and home is where everyone wants to be, all the time.  ... I really love the time I get to spend with you and Bill.  I love you both so much.  I'm so lucky.  Really. I. Am. So. Lucky.  ... I'm really sad to be leaving .... The point is I love you very much and it is both sad and scary to leave your 'wing' and my current idea and familiar basis of 'home'.  ... And this Christmas was a memorable one.  It was amazing.  Everyone got along; everyone was happy to be here and wanted to be in the company of everyone else. ... and, your sheep blanky is very comfortable. (I'm curled up in it as we speak! Ha Ha!) But no worries; I'm not sweating. .....   The point is:  I really love you.  You are home.  ..... PS.  My grades from fall:  A, A-,A-,A-,B ... your awesomest daughter."

Signed, as always, with a little heart and then her name.  What an amazing gift.  A treasure like no other.