Blueberry Pancakes

The month of November seems to have flown by.  Jillian’s birthday fell on a Saturday this year.  It’s hard to believe that she would have celebrated her 15^th birthday this year.  The year she was born her delivery date was a few days before Thanksgiving.  This year, Thanksgiving fell a few days before her day.  I had been thinking a lot about what I would do for her day and considered many different options and plans. As it often happens, all my potential plans went south when I woke up on Wednesday the 21^st in an anxious sense of contemplation, bordering on sadness.  I decided to just move forward and went to my normal Starbucks location on my way to work.  Then it happened. As I sat writing in my journal, a deep sadness overwhelmed me and I felt my eyes beginning to well up with tears.  It was a sadness that I hadn’t experienced in a while and I knew that this was going to be a day that I needed to take to be with Jillian.  For all the planning and thinking I had done about what I was going to do on her birthday, the decision had just been made for me.  This was the plan that was supposed to transpire on her birthday.  I let work know that I wouldn’t be coming in and then headed out to the ocean.

For the next few hours I walked on the beach and talked with Jillian and cried – tears similar to the very days after she died.  I wrote her name in the sand.  I took in the wonders of dogs and children playing in the low tide and a lame sea-bird struggle to take flight. I sifted through dozens of sand-dollars that had washed up to the beach, unsuccessfully looking for one that was whole, and settling for one which was beautifully imperfect – a perfect analogy for this journey.  I watched large cargo ships sail out into the horizon until I could no longer see them.  This sight immediately triggered my memory about the poem that we had read at Jillian’s service in Hawaii.  I share it again here, because perhaps it is poignant today for someone who might be reading it for the first time….

“I am standing upon the seashore.

A ship at my side spreads her white

sails to the morning breeze and starts

for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength.

I stand and watch her until at length

she hangs like a speck of white cloud

just where the sea and sky come

to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says;

"There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight. That is all.

She is just as large in mast and hull

and spar as she was when she left my side

and she is just as able to bear her

load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone

at my side says, "There, she is gone!"

There are other eyes watching her coming,

and other voices ready to take up the glad shout;

"Here she comes!"

And that is dying.”

                  Henry Van Dyke (1852 – 1933)

Being at the beach, thinking of Jillian’s life and all that has transpired since the day she died was overwhelming for sure, but it gave me a great sense of connection with her.  A sense of ‘this is exactly what I am supposed to do this year’ to remember her on her special day. I am frequently asked by other parents who are part of this 'club', "what am I supposed to do on those anniversary dates?".  There is often a lot of pressure and anxiety that is coupled with deep grief on those dates.  I often reply that I try to do something to honor or celebrate Jillian's life and give some examples of the things I have done.  Then I finish by saying...sometimes, the answer is nothing at all - just allowing things to play out as they may. I am glad I took my own advice this year.

I finished my afternoon off with a large plate of blueberry pancakes – one of Jillian’s favorite Saturday breakfast foods.  Perhaps she enjoyed the blueberry flavor and getting a ‘blueberry mouth’, but my hunch is that she enjoyed having her dad hover over her to make sure the blueberries or her spork didn’t happen to end up on the white carpet! Memories like these will always be emblazoned in my mind.  As I ate my stack at IHOP I thought of Jillian and how very lucky my life has been, about how lucky I am to be her dad.  It’s still what I am most proud of. Those nearly eleven years with her will always be the greatest in my life. I feel so privileged to have had that opportunity.  

Happy Birthday Jillian.  I love you. You are still, and always will be daddy’s little girl.  We'll see each other soon.