Sunday, August 18, 2013

Sundays at Grandma's - The Dragonfly



Today's Guest Post is by my Aunt and Nora's Great Aunt Sue.  She writes a beautiful story of how she honors and remembers my sweet daughter, even though she has never met her.  The love of family is powerfully healing, knowing others care so much about my little girl who never took a breath in this world.  

I hope you enjoy the story as much as I do. 
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My best friend works for a funeral home.  She’s also a grief counselor and excels at her profession.   I admire her so much for her strength in dealing with death and the emotional pain of those left behind.  She handles it with such poise and grace, in a way I can’t begin to comprehend.  I would be in a constant state of sadness and tears. 

One day when my BF and I were shopping for supplies for a grief group project, she told me the story of the dragonfly.  In the story, a beetle climbs up the lily pad to see what’s on the other side.  No one has ever done so and returned home to share the sights, so he is determined to come back and tell his friends what he sees.  He starts his climb and is so exhausted when he reaches the top, that he immediately falls asleep.   When he awakes, his body has changed.  He’s a dragonfly with wings, able to fly around and see everything!  He can’t wait to tell his friends what he sees outside of the little pond.  He flies by, time and time again, trying to get his friends attention to share what he sees.  It’s then, that he realizes his friends don’t recognize him.

A few days after Christmas last year, I came across a small foam green dragonfly, something I thought would be part of a child’s art project, laying in the hallway of my condo building.  Since there aren’t many children where I live, I imagined it was part of a Christmas gift a visiting child had carried into the building.  I placed the little dragonfly on the window ledge in full view, thinking someone might come looking for it and claim it.  In the hustle and bustle of the holiday, I didn’t give it much thought.

A couple of days later, my niece delivered her stillborn daughter on the day of our extended family Christmas celebration.  It was a long day of tears and sadness as we all worried and waited anxiously to hear that the labor was done and that Lindsey had come through it physically.  Since we were about 5 hours away from the hospital, periodic texts from my sister, Lindsey’s mom, kept us informed of the progress.  It was such a sad day, but I was so thankful to be in the comfort of family.

I arrived home later that evening, emotionally drained and slowly unpacked my van.  On one trip down to the garage, I noticed the dragonfly still sitting on the window ledge.

A few days later as we made arrangements to attend Nora’s funeral, I once again noticed the little green foam dragonfly on the window ledge.  It was then, that I remembered the story my BF had told me several months earlier.  This time I picked up the dragonfly and took it into my condo.  I knew the cleaners would toss it the next time they came through and I didn’t want that to happen.  I didn’t want my kittens to get it either, so I taped it to the inside of my cupboard door where I see it daily as I fix my breakfast.  Each morning I say hello to my little reminder of Nora, the precious little one I never got the chance to meet, but who has touched my heart so deeply.

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