“I want to see the sky and the trees.” ~My daughter’s words on the way to the hospital

We had asked her whether she wanted to sit up front or lie down in the back seat and that was her answer. So she sat on my lap and looked out the window all the way. It was a long trip. And she did not come home. She lost her sight. By the time her first-grade boyfriend sent a single rose up to her hospital room, she couldn’t see it.

What a way to start an essay. If I lived it, you can read it.

Most days I am well over the grief. She died in 1978 at the age of seven. It was a hot July day.

I am old now and recently I said my writing was medicine.

Do not kid yourself about what your mortality is and why you have it. It is on loan.

Who knows when you will lose a love you thought you could not live without. I did.

And I am not only alive but healthy.

Gravitas threads through my writing, and that is as it should be.

On my happiest day there is a pebble in my shoe reminding me that nothing is ever as we wish it to be.

Surrender may just mean seeing so clearly that you tell the truth to yourself.

I wish I could have done better with my life after her death. But I didn’t. I was just the same way I had always been, only sad.

I kept up a good front but I pushed people away. I couldn’t stand their level of being because mine had touched the bottom of hell and its flames were licking away the falsehood. I like to think I rose the third day, but probably I am exactly like I have always been.

What keeps me here is duty. Not such a good excuse, is it? But if it were not for duty, I would just be dust in the wind. Purpose keeps me here.

Love is ephemeral. It is often too much for me to bear.

Vicki Woodyard