Two years ago I got the call from my ex-husband telling me that a chaplain was at his house, and he had been told our younger daughter, Jessica, had died in Los Angeles. She had spent the night with a friend and had died in bed while her friend was at work. Since that moment, I have struggled to remain on this planet, and had it not been for my older daughter, Sarah, I would have followed Jess into that dark night. Not even my love for my husband, other family, or my friends would have kept me here to live with this pain. It just simply is too much.

But here I remain, two years later. And what do I know now that I didn’t know in the moment before I heard those dreadful words? What have I learned, for surely, though no one would voluntarily pay the price for such knowledge there must be some understanding gained in the face of so much loss? For what it is worth to anyone interested, here is my two-year short list of lessons learned from heartbreaking grief and loss:

• I will never get over losing my daughter. The pain may dull (I can hope) in time in much the same way that the agony of an intense injury eases as the body adjusts to its new reality. The injury is always there manifesting its brokenness at different levels at different moments, and often strikes when you’re going about your normal business unprepared for the stabbing pain. It’s hard to imagine ever experiencing joy again, but I refuse to rule out the possibility. For now, I strive for peace and contentment.

• I don’t know if this loss will ever feel real. There’s a hazy, dreamlike quality about my life now, almost as though I’m standing outside in the snow watching another woman going about the business of living. “Look at that, she’s smiling.” “She seems competent and functional.” “She can still multi-task…more or less.” But inside my mind is the litany, “This can’t be real. Jessie is NOT gone forever. She still feels present. She just hasn’t called. I should be able to see her no matter where she is. Why is this happening? Why has this happened?”

• I just have to get on with it. One breath at a time. People think you live in days. I’m not there yet, nowhere near there. Not with that litany in my head. The only time I’m free from the pain or at least numb to it is when I’m very distracted. Once in a while, I can just sit with the pain, and let it be what it is, and accept it. “So, ok, this is painful. I can just live with this pain right now, in this moment.” I remember during labor with Jess thinking, “I can handle this one contraction. This one won’t be too much. I can live with this agony for one minute.” And that’s how I made it through her birth, one contraction at a time. And now, that’s how I’m making it through her death, one agonizing moment at a time.
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• But guess what I’ve finally figured out? Without a doubt, I’m not a victim. Jess didn’t do this to me. She didn’t die so I would have to learn to live without her. No god or the universe said, “Hmmm, today I’m going to really screw up Bernie Creelman’s life just for the fun of it (or because it will make her stronger, or because Jessie is such an angel I need her in Heaven, or because there’s some huge Master Plan reliant on this woman’s daughter dying a tragic death at age 25).” Because the two huge truths I’ve finally grasped are 1) I am totally powerless to control or change anyone or anything. The best I can hope for is that I might, just might, be able to control or change something within myself; and, 2) I have choices. They’re all around me, in every aspect of my life. When I least feel in control or don’t feel as if I have any choices is when I need to stop and look at what I’m doing and what my options are for doing something a little or a lot differently.

I certainly never chose to have my daughter die before me. And for a while, I was screaming at a God I didn’t believe in, and the Universe, and the Creator, and everything else with potential power that could have possibly made my daughter die and thus taken away my potential for joy. But no one and nothing did this unthinkably horrible deed to spite me or teach me a life lesson or help me to grow to my ultimate potential. So what do I do with this knowledge? How do I make sense of the randomness of life? If you ever read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe you’ve heard that the answer to the ultimate “What’s it all about, Alfie” question is “42.” That’s right, 42. But I have to disagree. I think that Forrest Gump had it right: the ultimate answer is “Shit happens.” And not only shit, but beauty too, and love, and joy, and pain, and sorrow, and loss so great you don’t know how you will ever make it through the minute.

But within all that “stuff” are choices, and what I choose to do with the stuff in my life ultimately determines, I think, what I will get out of it at the end. There are some moments when the only choice is to sit and suffer for a while, knowing that “this too shall pass” in time (though probably not quickly enough). I try not to take out my pain on others (though my husband and the dog are sometimes barked at when I’m tired and at the end of my pain tolerance). They are both infinitely patient with me, thank goodness. Sometimes the only way to live in the moment is to have some brighter goal for the future. And sometimes I accept the pain as my connection to Jessie. Sometimes I rail away at Jess for the choice she inadvertently made that led to her death. Sometimes I aim my anger at others whom I think could have prevented her death in one way or another. But at the end of all that energy is the reality that she is still gone, and I’m still here without her. Yet, the other thing I know is that time passes quickly enough, each year screeching by in a blur, and hopefully, I will be seeing her again before I know it.

So I’ve made it through two years when I remember saying to my daughter Sarah, “I can’t do this,” and she, in all her wisdom-beyond-her-years answered, “But, Mom, you’re doing it.” I’ve cried buckets of tears in the last week as all the memories have flooded brightly into my mind and the “two years ago” events and moments chilled me to the bone. I miss my baby girl in all of my memories of her—the angel baby, toddler, little girl, tweenie, teenager (well, some of the time), and into her young womanhood that was cut way too short. I’ve not deified her nor made her into something she wasn’t. I remember her in all her glorious craziness and chaos and brains and emotions and ego. She was and always will be such a bright, shining light. She still shines for me and all who love her. Big hugs and thousands of kisses, my darling girl.