Yesterday and this morning I’ve been feeling pretty depressed and tearful, and I did quite a lot of crying thinking about missing Sarah. I walked up to our little downtown shopping area at lunchtime yesterday and looked for a bathrobe and a few other things, and just realized I felt very down. I was flipping through a rack at Marshalls and saw a bathrobe that looked okay, and then next to it there was a robe with “World’s Greatest Mom” or something like that embroidered on the back, and I just felt profoundly sad and kind of angry, thinking why do they have to put that here on this rack?
I bought the robe that looked fine, left Marshalls and was just standing in the atrium of the mall, staring down at the children’s play space, eating some Tootsie Rolls I bought at Five Below. This was Sarah’s favorite store, and is a store I like to wander into but Five Below ultimately makes me feel very sad because there are so many triggering things in there. When I was in Five Below, I kept wishing I would see a sign from Sarah, some indication from the universe that she was nearby and present. But it’s all a sensory overload of teen stuff and toys and neon and stuffies and virtually the entire store constitutes a sign from her.
Yesterday afternoon I was mostly lying around on the couch, feeling weepy. I was thinking about when Sarah lived inside my body as a baby, and where she is now, and I decided she still lives there inside my body, inside my heart. This didn’t really bring me any comfort but it seemed to be an answer to my own question of where she is now.
This morning I was thinking again of the robe I saw at Marshalls with the “World’s Best Mother” on the back and how it got me started off in this spiral of sadness, and it occurred to me that I could have interpreted this robe as a sign from Sarah, traveling with me inside my heart. That she could have wanted me to see that robe while I was shopping, smile, and think, “Sarah’s here with me in Marshalls letting me know that I am the world’s greatest mother.” Perhaps if I were feeling better about myself I would have felt that it was meant for me rather than feeling sad and excluded.
The First Year Without Sarah 