Stuart in the Sky

It’s important for me to keep reminding myself that Sarah was not a little kid when she died. She was a teenager. I’ve been sending myself a lot of messages in the last few weeks that reinforce the notion of Sarah being “out there” on her own, helpless, away from us, separated, lost. This just depresses me and keeps me sad. Like thinking about the fact that she never wanted to spend a night away from us. Or just thinking about her as a little kid too much, rather than as the teenager in high school she actually was, who would tune us out and give us the cold shoulder in favor of Minecraft, YouTube, and her friends.

I read a quote from the Bhagavad Gita yesterday. “The soul is not born, nor does it die; it did not spring from something, and nothing sprang from it. It is unborn, eternal, immortal, and ageless. It is not destroyed when the body is destroyed. The soul is glorious, unborn, deathless, free from old age, immortal, and fearless.”

Sarah is not scared and alone without us. Her soul is on a journey that I can’t even comprehend. I like thinking of her as fearless. She was very brave. She had to have so many medical treatments and surgeries. The surgery for her scoliosis basically involved stretching her back as if she were on a medieval rack and then clamping it to a metal rod. I can’t imagine.

She has important work to do with her soul journey. It makes me think of when we got her a big balloon of Stuart the Minion from Despicable Me. We purchased several character balloons and Minion balloons over the years from Despicable Me and she loved all of them. She had a special love for Stuart.

One night, she and Max were hanging out in her bedroom and I came in and Max was singing the oldie “Spirit in the Sky” but he had changed to the words to “Stuart in the Sky.” Stuart the balloon was hovering in the air over her bed and she thought it was hilarious. We all started singing it. We changed “die” to “fly.”