It is with reluctance that I write this post. I am not entirely sure why. I should not be ashamed or embarrassed by my feelings. Yet somehow the further away I get from June 13, 2008, the harder it is for me to open up and tell anyone when I am having a hard day.
Today I have had a hard day. I think of Camille everyday. She is so much a part of my being. Thoughts of her are behind every other thought I have or comment I make. Most days those thoughts are not charged with emotion. They are just passing thoughts.
But there are other days, like today, where I feel the pull of that part of my heart that has passed on to the great beyond. I feel the absence left there. I long to visit that part of my heart and have it fit back in its rightful place.
Some days I just plain miss her. Most days I don't let myself go to that place where I think in depth about my sweet baby girl. Most days I let the thoughts pass on through without holding on to them to feel my way through them. Maybe some other people would never let these birds of sorrow nest in their minds. I know other people who live daily with these birds of sorrow as their constant companions. That is the way other people find their way through grief.
But I am not other people. I am just me. And I have found my own way through grief by letting the birds come visit on occasion and sing me their mournful melody of loss and longing. Today I sat still and listened.
As the primary children put on our church program, I thought of how this would have been Camille's first year having a part at the big podium. I wondered what kind of personality she would have showed. Would she have been shy in front of the big crowd with a small voice like Lauren or would she have milked the crowd's attention like Ann Marie?
As I sat during choir practice making eyes at Harrison I felt as though I could have been looking at Camille. The older he gets the more he resembles her. It is a good thing he is a boy and wearing all different clothes. It is bitter sweet to look at him and see them both right before me.
My sweet Camille. How I wish I could fly to visit you for an hour or two and then return to my life here. I ache to be near you. Our family will never feel whole while you are not with us. Yet I have sure faith that this time for us to be apart is only temporary and the day will come when we are reunited. Knowing that as I do, I also know that it behoves me to live as fully as I can in this short span of time I have called mortal life. I ought not to waste away my limited time drowning my spirit in the sorrow of our separation. For it will be, after all, but a small moment some day. But forgive me if on occasion I sit and sing along with the sorrow birds and allow them to stay a while in the branches of my soul. Somehow their mournful visits keep you alive in me.
