she is everywhere
She is everywhere.
I didn’t realize it before, but since my daughter’s death, it has smacked me in the face over and over and over again. She’s inescapable. She is in every room, every nook and cranny. She is in a million smells, sights, and sounds.
She picked the entry code to our home — “5…6…7…8.” (She was a dancer. If you’ve ever danced, you get it.) She labeled all of our names over the hooks in the entryway. Her name is still there, over the hook where her backpack and dance bag hung. I can’t bring myself to take it down.
In the kitchen hangs the gigantic Mother’s Day card she bought for me. Her teenage brothers just signed their names, but she filled the whole thing up with I LOVE YOUs and Xs and Os. Her cups and her plates are in the cabinets. Each family member picked a color, and she picked the purple set. There would always be a purple cup or plate on the counter or in the sink, but now all the purple items are sitting on the shelf together, untouched. My apron hangs on a hook adorned with the sticker that she made for me: “Best Mom Ever!”
There was a load of her laundry in the washing machine and dryer when she died. They are sitting in a black trash bag in the corner, taunting me every time I walk in that room. I don’t know what to do with them.
In the bathroom we shared, there is a shelf just for her — her pink toothbrush, bubble gum toothpaste, animal-shaped face masks, and bath bombs. She always picked the Bath and Bodyworks hand soap that she wanted out of my stash in the closet. The last bottle she picked is almost empty, and I find myself going to the kitchen to wash my hands because I don’t want to use the last of it. I don’t want to get rid of the last hand soap that she picked.
Every hallway is filled with family pictures… pictures of her with her big, blue eyes staring back at me. When I open my closet door, I’m greeted with more of her homemade stickers and a construction-paper note that says “I 💖U” in sparkly pink marker.
And then… Then there is her bedroom. I keep the door closed. I have gone in there a few times — to pick the clothes she would wear to be cremated, to tuck her favorite stuffed animal and blanket into her bed — but since the first few days, I haven’t been able to open the door. I’ve tried twice, and both times ended up sobbing so hysterically that I scared myself.
Her room will have to wait.
It has been one month since Libby, my beautiful, sweet, talented, caring, incomparable ten year-old daughter, was killed in a car accident. And I still see her everywhere, every second, every day.
