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.
That is so incredibly beautiful... There are no words!
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