by Debby Kwiecien

Created on: July 30, 2010

We almost had 30 years together.  She was my best friend, my confidant, my shopping buddy and mostly my beloved daughter.  She kept me up to date about her friends; who was having a baby, who was getting married and who was getting divorced.  She gave me advice about haircare, dying my hair whenever the gray started showing through, and encouraging me to try different styles.  She introduced me to new foods and taught me a few new recipes, even though as a child she wouldn't go anywhere near the kitchen, and I was so proud that she turned out to be quite a good cook.

She also suffered tremendously from depression.  I could see the hurt inside her, festering to come out, but no matter what I said or did I couldn't get her to open up.  I prayed for her to no avail.  We talked about everything-everything except whatever it was that was eating her soul alive.

We made dozens of trips to the hospital.  As her depression pushed her into prescription drug abuse-she desperately wanted the pain to go away and no matter what she did it wouldn't.  Everything seemed to cave in on her at once.  Her second husband divorced her and left her jobless, without a car and no way to take care of herself.  She was going to have to move back home with us, her parents.

But, before that could happen the unthinkable did-she died.  She was home alone.  She'd stolen a drug patch thinking it would ease her pain, but it made her unable to help herself when she fell and broke her nose.  A heavy glass kitchen table fell on top of her, pinning her down.  She couldn't get up and she died alone on the kitchen floor.

How long she lay there we don't know; it could have been as much as thirty-six hours.  When she didn't answer my knocks on the door or her bedroom window I knew there was something terribly wrong.  A neighbor came over and asked if I needed help.  He climbed in a bedroom window and opened the front door for me.

At that moment I became personally familiar with the biblical words, "Rachel was weeping and wailing in the wilderness for her children and could not be consoled."[Matthew 2:18].  Her name ripped from my soul and continued in one long wail that seemed to last for hours.  And, it did for about four or five hours I cried and wailed on the front porch of my daughter's home while the emergency personnel and police did their jobs.

The funeral passed in a blur with me giving her eulogy, while I leaned precariously on my husband's arm, her daddy.  The days through the holidays, Thanksgiving, her birthday and Christmas, are an impossible puzzle that I can't seem to piece together.  The fog lasted for about six months, maybe more.  I felt nothing, had no interest in anyone or anything and I didn't care that I didn't care.

Now, with the grandchildren, my daughter's babies who aren't really babies anymore, and my son's babies who are too young to remember their auntie, are pulling my soul out of the darkness.  The light at the end of the tunnel is finally starting to shine brighter and pull me toward its warmth.  Life is beginning to mean something again and maybe my new best friends will be found amongst these babies that are so dear to me and tug insistently at my heartstrings every time I look in their eyes and see their mama glimmering back at me.

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