on being strong
I have lost count of the amount of people who have commented on how “strong” I am in the past month. “You’re such a strong woman,” they say. “I don’t know how you’re doing it.”
Honestly, I have no idea. I don’t feel strong. I feel like at any given moment I’m about a second away from unleashing a torrent of tears and falling into a heap of heaving and sobbing flesh on the ground. I feel like that little Dutch boy that stuck his finger in the dam and there’s a giant wall of water building and I’m just standing there holding it all back with one tiny, chubby finger.
The truth is that every single day since Libby died, I have had someone else depending on me, and so I just keep going.
The first few days I focused my energy on taking care of my 19 year-old son, who was driving the car when my daughter was killed. He had been unresponsive when paramedics arrived, and as I drove to the accident site, I thought he was dead too.
Miraculously, he had only cuts, bruises, and a severe concussion, but for the first 12 hours after the accident his memory was stuck on a 15-minute delay, and he kept repeating the same questions and comments over and over and over again. He still has no memory of the accident, and I hope he never does.
I filled my days after Libby’s death in a numb, ultra-focused shock, attending to the “business” of a traumatic event. My ex-husband and I met with funeral directors, counselors, police officers. We made photo slideshows of our daughter’s short life. I wrote her obituary and her entire memorial service so that it was exactly what I knew she would want. I printed and framed pictures, created the memorial cards, and edited a montage of Libby’s home-choreographed dances. I barely slept.
After the memorial service came and went, my days were still filled with doctor’s appointments, counseling appointments, designing thank you cards, and trying to return the million messages in my inboxes. After two weeks, my 16 year-old returned to high school, which meant getting up, dressed, and out the door to drive him there by 7:3o am each morning. He also resumed practices for the school musical each evening.
For all of these things, I’ve had to be “strong.” But what was my other option? To stay in bed and let my sons fend for themselves during the most difficult ordeal of their lives? To curl up in the fetal position and ignore the many, many people who have been so unbelievably generous with their love, comfort, and support?
Perhaps some people could do those things, but I can’t.
Just like I can’t leave my mother — diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer just a month before Libby’s death — to go without my help as she undergoes chemotherapy and lengthy trips to the ICU. And so I sit with her in the hospital, and make her meals and do her laundry when she’s home. Because that’s what family does, even if they’re not feeling particularly strong.
Libby cared so much about everyone else around her. So even though inside I feel like curling up in her bed and sobbing each day away, it’s the least I can do in her honor to do the same.
