Freecycling

Yesterday when Polly the Beagle and I were out for our morning walk, I saw that a neighbor was freecycling a little blue chair for a child. For a moment or two I thought something like “Good back support, nice deep tush, and armrests. Sarah could do well sitting up in that.” Which was silly because, not only is Sarah dead and gone, but it was really a little kid’s chair, not a chair for Sarah as a teenager like she was at the time of her death.

I guess everyone has moments like these, not just parents of dead children. It seems to me looking back, although it’s hard for me to focus clearly on my random mental musings when Sarah was still alive, that I would see things in stores or other places that reminded me of her babyhood or toddlerhood, and then think, of course she’s too old for that now, or she was so cute at the age she used xyz. I think the feeling was one of warm rosy nostalgia rather than acute sadness.

I remember when Sarah was about two or three, her nanny’s sister had a baby, and on the weekend Sarah and I brought over some presents for the baby and some baby equipment Sarah was too old for. There was a baby swing Sarah had enjoyed a lot as an infant but hadn’t used in a long time and was, of course, infant-sized. We set it up for Baby Daniel. When Sarah saw it all set up, she had to cram her big toddler tush in the seat and have one last swing. She didn’t look very comfortable but she was determined. Maybe she wanted to show Baby Daniel how to extract maximum fun from the swing. Or maybe she was suddenly feeling unready to give it up. She could be a possessive little bugger and she was an only child and didn’t have a lot of sharing opportunities.

Last night Max and I watched the movie “Till,” which is a very good but deeply sad movie about a mother’s grief for her murdered child and the absence of justice for his death. It was a hard watch in many ways for both Max and me, speaking beyond the fact that it is a hard to watch on its face. Seeing a teenager die for no reason is horrible and seeing his mother’s grief is almost unbearable. In the movie Mamie says at one point something like “He was a breech baby.” (Just like Sarah was). “He had a lot of problems but he was always perfect to me.” It really went straight to my heart.

At my bedtime Max and I were having a little cry, talking about the movie and talking about Sarah. He shared with me a song he had been listening to a lot lately that he’d discovered, which is really beautiful, but also sad, called “The Joy In Sarah’s Eyes” by Douglas Dare. There’s a verse that goes:

Sarah, I see you every day
And though I age, you stay the same
How I remember the joy in your eyes
That joy still in me, and keeps me alive
Oh it, keeps me alive
And it, keeps you, oh, it keeps you alive…