Guilt

Lately it occurs to me that I’ve moved past those early feelings of bewilderment, denial, and shock that were so hard. There was almost an electric shock to my body when I would realize anew that Sarah was dead. As if I were being zapped awake. I had irrational thoughts that she would reappear, that she had been kidnapped, or was somehow outside the house and needed our help to come in. I had seen her body at the funeral home and her cremains are in our living room in a purple urn (her favorite color), so my rational mind knew she was really dead, but my poor everyday mind would be half-listening for the school bus to pull up.

I realize lately that I’m not having these moments of shock so much anymore, so maybe I’ve transitioned to the “depression” and “acceptance” phases of the ever-popular Five Stages of Grief. (My mind is telling me at the moment that this theory was developed by Hannah Arendt, but that’s ridiculous. Elisabeth Kubler Ross. Hannah Arendt wrote about the banality of evil concerning the Eichmann in Jerusalem trial. Connection? Children dying? Let’s leave it at that. I have no desire to apply Godwin’s Law to Sarah’s death.)

Along with depression and acceptance comes a lot of guilt. I felt overwhelming guilt in the first days after Sarah died, primarily because I wasn’t home when it happened and I somehow felt responsible and that I could have controlled the situation if I had been there. Now is a different type of guilt, a feeling like I should or could have given her a better life, could have done more for her, been more present, less wrapped up in my own problems. Max was always able to play with Sarah and they had so much pretend play together, especially using her stuffed animals and minions. I just wasn’t that good with pretend play. I did a lot of activities with her, like assisted ballet, therapeutic swim, assisted horseriding, Lollipop Kids, and so forth. Dr. Z pointed out last night that this balances us out, so that makes me feel a bit better. Still, it’s so easy to dwell on my shortcomings.

We’ve been going through Sarah’s papers, looking at a lot of stuff she did in school. She has a lot of fill-in-the-blank writing exercises that they would assist her with, since she couldn’t hold a pencil. I like the one above especially because it says at the bottom “I am Sarah and I will always be me.” That makes me cry but it fills me up with peace at the same time. There is another line further up where she fills in the blank on “I am as loud as a ” ____________” and she’s supposed to fill in an animal. You can see on the paper that she originally wrote turtle and then that was crossed out and turkey was inserted. I wonder about that. Sarah had lost her speech completely by about age 5 or 6 and she was really about as loud as a turtle, so it was a good choice for her. She and I both really liked turtles a lot too.

I don’t know if there was undue pressure for her to choose turkey? (Note: Sarah had great teachers and I’m not seriously complaining about this.) Yes, I’m wildly projecting here. You see, Max drew my attention to the turtle/turkey issue and what came to mind was a memory of me in Second Grade. My class had an art project to make animals out of shoe boxes that we each brought in from home. I made a turtle. I papier mache’d and painted it and attached some small decorations and I was very pleased with the outcome. The art teacher, in a well-meaning way, began to press me to decorate it more extravagantly, with a kind of 70’s flair. My turtle ended up wearing a sort of Marcia Brady headscarf, and then she had green yarn hair ribbons glued to her back in the somewhat-recognizable shape of groovy flowers. I was dismayed by these choices but had no ability at that age to assert myself to prevent them.

I remember I came home from school and that evening was crying or upset about my turtle. My parents were pretty typical laissez-faire 1970s parents and did not generally pay a whole lot of attention to either tears, upsets, or school activities. But somehow the fact that my turtle had been beautified against my will, and was now ruined in my eyes, struck my father as wrong. I remember him phoning the school, or the teacher, and saying in grown-up terms that I should not have been forced to change my art. (After he got off the phone, there was also a chat with me about speaking up and expressing my preferences and not expecting people to know what I wanted unless I told them.)

The Affair of the Turtle, as it were, really stuck in my mind, not so much because of the value of artistic self-expression, but because I remembered my father sticking up for me and taking my feelings seriously. I saved the shoebox turtle for many years, and through several house moves, as hideous as it was, I think because of that moment. So — and I am right on the cusp of having a point to all this — when I saw that Sarah’s self-description had been changed from turtle to turkey, I had to wonder whether I had stuck up for her in the same way. I hope she felt that I was really there for her.