Eight

I had a hard day today.

Because, you see, all the cherry trees are budding out. The willow catkins are full, the star magnolia we planted for her is exploding with blooms. Early spring is pushing itself forward all across the Northwest, just as it did this day eight years ago.

It's fortunately hard to remember exactly how I felt that day, the First of March, 2002. Exhausted. Confused. Bereft. Hopeless.

The passing years have softened the hard edge of the pain and loss. I don't feel the same aching emptiness I felt that day. And I've come to understand a little about myself and my grief for my daughter.

I never felt the connection that Mojo had with Bryn the infant; I couldn't. My bride lived with that little life inside her for three-quarters of a year. Feeling her move, changing as she grew. Bryn was an immediacy to her that she never could be to me.

To me, our little girl was a future. So what I lost, when the tiny stars went out inside her head, was our future together.

And every year, this day, I want to just sit on the sand and tell sad stories of the giggles we never shared, of the tears we never wept, of the games we never played and the fights we never had. Of her grubby soccer cleats that are not on her floor, her Transformers backpack or princess lunchbox that are missing from their places. That her place at the table, in the bed, in our lives, is empty.

My hands are lost without you. My throat is dry with tearless weeping but I cannot stay you; you passed us so quickly, my dear little girl, that all I can do is stand and all I can say is goodbye.

I never knew you, never had the chance to know you, but I miss you so today that my heart pinches with the loss of it. You were the future we never had, and never will have. If there is no death where the spirit lives, you will live as long as I do. Goodbye, love. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Bryn Rose Gellar 3/1/02-3/2/02