I still remember the night we lost her like it was yesterday.
It was always the four of us. Two boys. Two girls. Just friends and nothing more. Every weekend we knew the best clubs. We’d close the bars down. And we were always the ‘last man standing’…dancing actually, at a party.
I was away on vacation when she got in the accident. And I wasn’t home long before her fight was over. I never made it up to the hospital to see her. Though the boys told me it was better that way.
They got the phone call first and they came to the house to tell me. I thought we were going to hang out … to try to get our minds off the worry. But distraction turned to mourning when they told me “Our girl didn’t make it.” We left my house and went to a small shrine to pray. Something we didn’t do much of in those days.
And then we gathered to tell the rest and to wash our sorrows away with the bottle.
I came home late that night. Just as my Dad was getting in the door from his middle-of-the-night shift. He tells the story that I came in behind him and stopped short in the foyer. “Dad…” I was still standing there, just in front of the door, steel-framed and expressionless, when he turned around. I told him in a deadpan voice, “Jenny died tonight.” He crossed the living room in silence; and when he embraced me, my steel-framed stance broke and melting into my father’s arms, I wailed like a child.
Her funeral was only two days apart from an old classmate’s who had committed suicide. It was unseasonably cold and there was frost on the ground and in my heart. And my knees shook as I stood graveside in my thin dress and no proper coat. And I thought I was “grown.”
While my brother’s death rocked my world in a way from which I will never fully recover, I always knew, deep down, that my brother wasn’t well. And there was some small sense of expectancy amongst his terribly tragic death. But Jenny’s death, and the old classmate too for that matter … nobody saw those coming. I hate unpleasant surprises.
I was 18 and practically on my own and I didn’t even have something appropriate to wear to the funerals, much less coping skills or the ability to properly process. I was just a teenager, hanging on by a thread … a hardened ball of snow, constantly getting too close to the flames. A warrior in the making, but so unbelievably broken in the meantime.
Trying to navigate, trying to understand, trying to grow up, trying to live … I still remember it all, like it was yesterday…
And just like that…
I am the mother of a teenager. And the subtle signs of the recklessness of adolescence are beginning to surface. And it is a far scarier view from this seat than the seat I took twenty years ago.
Last week, my daughter received her letter of acceptance into her high school of choice. Along with that letter came a sigh of relief, a surge of pride, tears of happiness and legitimate excitement for the journey that she is about to embark on. There are so many “firsts” just around the corner for her. And she deserves all of the goodness that is to come. She has worked hard to get here.
That letter left me reflecting on my own teenage journey and the complexities that plagued it: Jenny’s death, several suicides, my car accident, reckless choices, stupid boyfriends, the partying and the pain. The peer pressure was suffocating and yet I yearned for adult independence. My support at home was minimal but what I had, I often pushed away in anger. Grappling to make adult decisions with a brain that still had one foot in childhood, I stumbled more than I walked. My friends held the highest significance in my life and consumed my time and yet somehow, I always felt alone. The empty promises, the wrong calls, the blatant mistakes, the imbalance of knowledge and ability …. the angst of adolescence, that sits like a thin line of snow on a steel rail. Precariously perched, under the warm rays of sun, it will melt. With the untimely swipe of a hand, it will crumble. And with colder conditions, it will harden and freeze. Rarely is it allowed to just be.
While our lives are very different and our struggles are not the same, it seems that whoever you are, adolescence always seems to come with hard lessons, high emotions and inevitably, some tragedy. While it was in my teens that I learned all too well, the smell of death; it was also where I learned the taste of love. While I took unwise risks and made some poor choices, I also came out of my shell and began to make a name for myself. While I rebelled and was unkind at times, it’s where I separated my self from the things and the people who were holding me back and began living my life as my own. While I suffered, I grew.
I am acutely aware of my insatiable desire to protect my children, both in the physical and emotional realm. And the journey that lies ahead of us, is a frightening one. I want so desperately to save her from heartache. And I want to keep her safe. I want her to have the strength that I have, without the pain. I want her to have the wisdom, without the consequences. I want her to soar without ever falling. I want her story to be a good one, with a happy ending, like mine, but without the tragedy.
But I also know that it isn’t my story to write … and that there’s no such thing as achievement without struggle. Nor are there ever any guarantees.
I hope that the ‘growing up fast’ that I had to do, pays off as I mother this teen. I’ll continue to teach her the lessons I learned hard and share with her my pearls of wisdom. I hope that the smiles are many and the tears are few. And when the day comes that I have to hold her like my father did me, I hope that I have the strength to be her steel when she isn’t. For her heartache will certainly shatter mine.
I hope that we survive adolescence.
And when we do, I hope that she looks back and through my strength, she sees my fragility and she thanks me for building another warrior – with a frame made of steel and a heart that melts like snow.
