Stalking the Stacks with Library Lil
*Stalking the Stacks with Library Lil* |
2008-02-07 I've heard that the body totally regenerates itself every seven years. Supposedly every cell in your body has dies and been replaced in that time. I don't know if it is true (and I did a quick google and wikipedia search and was only able to discover that the vulcan mating cycle is every seven years!). It is an interesting concept to think about, because certainly we as humans change and evolve and I daresay no one reading this thinks they are quite the same person that they were seven years ago.Seven years ago, we got "the call" the one that said our birthmother was in labor, the one that said Zoe was coming. Tomorrow would have been her seventh birthday. I'm certainly not the same person I was seven years ago. I've been able to forgive a bit, move on a bit, live a bit since then. I think I'm a better person than I was then. I'm certainly a better mom than I was back then (the last almost five years of practice might have something to do with that). I do hope, though, that the cell thing is wrong. I would hate to lose the cells that had physical memory of Zoe. Of how it felt to have her head on my shoulder. Neither of my kids felt quite like that, perhaps every baby is a bit different int hat regard. The other day, I decided that the grief I feel for Zoe is like if I had a deep cut on my shoulder. It doesn't show in most circumstances, and it has pretty much healed over. The scar isn't even a red scar, tender to the touch. And yet every once in a while, soemthign happens to bump that scar, and a small pain shoots through me. Every once in a while something will hit me, and the grief comes back. At P's funeral last month, one of husband's co-workers said grief hits everyone different, "G feels like he needs to work, me when my daughter died, I needed to sit in the hallway--just the hallway. I don't know why." And I remembered sitting in the living room staring out the window. It was all I did some days. Sometimes, I'll look at that window and it will hit me, that grief. I said that you never knew exactly when that grief would strike, sometimes years later--thinking about something husband had said to me, he remembered the candy he'd gotten me for valentine's day that year and how he's never been able to eat it since then (and how my mom gets it for him for christmas every year). He told the co-worker that we kept the door to Zoe's room closed for almost two years, even though she had never slept there. In a way, it was like baring my shoulder so people could look at the scar, because neither co-worker had known. Which made me realize, you can look at me and not see this scar. But I need to remember it is there. |
