A Supernova and other things

I have a collection of things today.  A conglomeration of randomness that sits on my mind like a weight that isn’t heavy but has spent so long in the crook of the same arm it has grown mammoth in its mass.  

The first thing is my supernova.  I read an article (http://www.glowinthewoods.com/home/2012/5/30/the-meaning-of-a-life.html ) about the power of death, the meaning of a life per sae.  I have been since considering the weight of the death of Gabbie.  If you consider the world as a whole, the quantity of people that have inhabited its face is infinite.  The number will continue to grow forever, just as the number line is infinite.  But between any given numbers on the number line is a value that also grows indefinitely as one number is split any infinite number of times and into infinite possibilities.  That one number represents the possibilities of any one person.  They become a world all alone.  One number, one person, has the same number of possibilities as there are number of people in the world.  When a person dies it as though a world dies because within that person was a world of infinite possibilities.  Their death creates a sort of Super Nova that pulls and jars all the people around it.  It most drastically affects those closest to it.  The people in their worlds around it have to adjust to a life without the person who is gone, the person who, from the very first moment they were acknowledged have affected the orbit of life.  (This was explained way better by the author).  Anyway, after reading this, I began to realize the impact her death had.  Gabbie’s life, though she was not here for very long, had already altered my very orbit of life.  Now that she is gone I have to readjust my possibilities to reflect the possibilities of my life without her.  She is the Supernova in my sky.

  

There are so(( ( many variations to the spelling of Gabraella’s name, and they are everywhere.  It seems that some days I can’t avoid them.  Just a couple days ago, D and I were sitting at the light on Union and French making a left on the street when I looked up and on a sign there was a notice of a lawn fete or something at the church of St. Gabriel.  I don’t even know where that church is.  I started telling D about seeing her name everywhere and when, as if to prove my point, we drove past a Gabbie lane.  Really?! Gabbie lane?  First he asked me if I knew it was there, which I didn’t.  Then he tried to explain it by equating it to noticing that “’there are a lot of purple cars on the road today’ and then everywhere you go you are paying attention to purple cars so you see more of them.”  But am I looking for her name?  I don’t know.  I don’t think so.  Any way… my Supernova butterfly is all around.  

I wish we could live by the ocean, to see it's endless horizon.  I imagine heaven to be like the horizon at the beach.  I like to imagine that each sunset I'd see would be painted just for me by her.  That the footprints in the sand would be hers as she followed along my side.  I like to imagine.

I've been trying to focus on the future in a new place.  The struggle for me is that it’s a new place without her.  It’s a new place, new future, new start, without her. Everything is without her.  And no matter how beautiful or fun something is, a thought somewhere in the midst of it, that I can sometimes push away until later, is that Gabbie will never see this.  If only you could glimpse for just a minute my sorrow.  I’d so much rather the old life where I was naïve about the pain and loss and hopelessness of losing a child, where I was unaccustomed to a damp pillow, where I didn’t cry at least one tear every day, where I had more faith, faith in Him and faith in “it’s all for a purpose”, where the future had more stability and optimism, less anxiety, and where I still had Gabbie.  But that cannot be. The more we look for an apartment, the more I realize the enormity of what that means: without her.  We’d never have been able to afford a place as nice as the one’s we’re looking at with three bedrooms, especially not with an added daycare and diaper expense.  Where would we have lived?  Oh Gabbie, we would have figured it out… you didn’t have to leave. 


(Art work from www.universetoday.com and by Christian's beach artist Carley Marie Dudley.)