Just.
I wrote this Wednesday evening, and I saved it and left it, and cried, because I couldn’t make it make sense:
The summer before last, the little sprite of an 11-year-old Makenzie was running around calling me Aunt Ash, playing, and laughing, and today she’s lying, unconscious, in a pediatric intensive care unit in North Carolina.
Things change.
We talk about how they’ll change, but then they do. And it’s so quickly, that there’s nothing to talk about or to say, because it’s done. It’s all done, and there’s no taking it back. One day you’re driving, or you’re talking, or you’re 12 years old and trying out for track, and it all changes, forever.
And on Thursday morning, Kenzie was gone.
Her myspace profile still has sparkling hearts, and cherries, and a cow. She’d asked to have her birthday present early. The valentines she and her brother and sister personalized for their cousins arrived in the mail this week. It was sudden, and it wasn’t ever expected.
It all changes. And we say it change—we talk about how it changes. But then, it does. And we can’t go back. And I can’t go back. And she can’t go back. And this just isn’t what we have in mind, when we talk about change. It can’t be. Until it all does.
I can’t stop hearing her call me Aunt Ash, and I can’t stop seeing her in the hallway in her grandmother’s room, grinning at me without her glasses on. I can’t stop hearing her sleeping with her cousins, all intertwined and wrapped up in the same blankets. I just keep feeling her, and missing her.
Tonight, I wrote to a friend, one of my few constants in life:
It’s been so, so hard and in so many ways, I feel so deeply that this family is my own, as I have spent most every day with them for the past three years. It’s just been so sad, and is only going to get more overwhelming as the week goes by. I feel like I have no tears left, until it starts all over again.
I cannot attempt to know the depth of the loss that her mother, her sister, and her brother will face. I can’t know the hurt of those who held her and rocked her and felt her in her infancy. I do know the hurt of having known her, only briefly, and having her taken away. And it is just so sharp, so needless, and just so deep.
I can know what I feel. I feel like the loss I have experienced and felt in the past two years has weighed on me. I feel, overwhelmingly, like I have the past few days, with the tears. I feel like I have no hurt left, and I feel like I can’t miss them any more, until it starts all over again.
I don’t know. I don’t understand. I don’t want to understand. I don’t need anyone to try to make me understand. I just want to understand that it can’t be understood. It just can’t.
:(
24 February 2007 at 17:06call if you wanna
Dearest Ashey,
24 February 2007 at 21:24dont for one second imagine that you are anything but part of this family! Just remember, Tears can heal, nobody can truly understand, and a little (Allred)bread always helps you feel a little better.
Makenzie Anne was truly a sweet and pure little spirit and that is why she was called home so quickly.
You are always welcome to come and cry on my shoulder, that is what brothers are good for.
I love you and I’m praying for you. if only there were more I could do.
26 February 2007 at 6:19Oh Ashley, I’m sorry. I’m praying for you.
1 March 2007 at 21:36Oh Ashley, I am so sorry. We can’t ever understand why things like this happen. You and Makenzie’s family will be added to our prayers.
5 March 2007 at 10:41I am so sorry for your loss. Especially such a young girl from cardiac arrest I hope for your familys sake they can determine a cause. My prayers will be with you and your family.
6 March 2007 at 10:39I am thinking of you every day.
8 March 2007 at 9:00I have never spoken to you before, never came upon your blog until just today and I read this as the first entry and it left such a heavy impact upon my heart that I felt so compelled to write to you.
I am so sorry for the loss of Kenzie. I don’t know much but I only know that words won’t help heal the pain, but time will. I could tell you a bunch of cliched things to try to make you feel better, but it doesn’t distract you away from the loss that has occured.
What I will tell you, is that I have offered up prayers for you in Kenzie’s name and for peace at heart for you and your beautiful family.
Take care, I hope that in time your heart will slowly mend.
Jess.
18 March 2007 at 1:11Ashley-
20 March 2007 at 14:51I’m sorry for your loss. You captured that moment better than anyone could have, and I’m grateful that you did. Thank Goodness for the plan of salvation and all that it offers. I appreciate your sincerity. I always have. Hope you’re doing well.
[...] Several months ago and in the middle of a whole lot going on, the dogs and I loaded up and moved back to downtown Salt Lake City. I mentioned a week or so ago that I’ve moved five times in four years, but I failed to count some more and extend the time to a more reasonable five years—bringing the grandish total to seven moves in five years. In case you were wondering, that is something that is very, very wrong. [...]
25 May 2007 at 15:21