Resilience
It’s been an emotionally charged day. It’s Terri’s “deathiversary.” Weird word, right? Well, it’s certainly a weird day. One that, no matter what you do or don’t do, insists on being seen. Heard. Recognized.
Sandwiched smack dab in the middle of Thanksgiving and Christmas, the timing intensifies an already magnified sense of missing Terri. Luckily, the “fates” offered up an answer to the annual question, “What should we do this year?”
After seeing our NYC Book Trailer, a fellow grief warrior and member of Team Terri’s Miles for Marisa, suggested we speak at her daughter’s school. For years I’d been hearing glowing accolades about Our Sister’s School, a private all-girls middle school. Tuition-free and founded to educate and inspire economically disadvantaged girls from the New Bedford area, I immediately signed Miss M and I up. Their next available date? December 5th…
My first thought was, Are you trying to tell me something, Terri?
As I read through their website, words literally jumped off the page—engage, inspire, community, brave, mindset of achievement and excellence, intellectual curiosity, community, partnership, passion, agency, citizenship, service, activism, integrity, hope.
I swear I could literally visualize Terri doing a “happy dance” somewhere out in the cosmos. This was exactly the kind of progressive educational culture Terri always secured for Miss M. What better place to honor our Graceful Woman Warrior on the anniversary of her passing?
Prepping for the big day, I explained to Miss M that we needed to pick “one specific vocabulary word to teach students” throughout our presentation.
“How about resilience?” I asked.
Her eyes got that faraway, contemplative look denoting brilliance at work, so I waited patiently. Suddenly returning to earth, her sparkling eyes locked with mine, and she vigorously nodded her assent. Our next task was to define resilience. After rejecting Merriam-Webster and Google Dictionary, I asked, “Do you want to write your own definition?”
This is what she came up with:
Dressed to the nines in her new black and white concert attire, her mother’s scarf adding the perfect flair, Miss M took to the stage at Morning Meeting. Throughout our presentation, we focused on the question, “How do you build resilience when hard things happen?” Exemplifying the epitome of the word resilience, Miss M shared all of the hidden “Mamãe gifts” she has tapped into to build her resilience—writing, empowerHER, helping others by sharing her story on our Dream Book Tour and on podcasts, and finally, through songwriting.
Almost every person in the room raised their hand when we asked who had experienced a loss. By the end of our 15-minute presentation, the number of hearts touched could be counted in the number of tears shed.
In closing, I reminded the girls to honor their own stories—stories of loss and of hard things happening in their lives. More importantly, I encouraged them to find a way to “build their own resilience” by sharing their stories—with a friend, a teacher, through their writing, their artwork, or perhaps even by writing their own song as Miss M had.
Arriving home to an empty house, the weight of Terri’s 5th deathiversary settled into my bones. Yearning for relief, I FaceTimed my son. My gentle giant embraced me from afar, holding me through my grief.
Then I noticed a text from my BFF, Jo: “Good morning my friend. My thoughts and prayers are headed your way for today. Woke up thinking about Terri and your/our loss.”
Unbidden tears rolled down my cheeks.
Another text came through, this one from Auntie Cole: “How could it be 5 years already??? Half a decade without my best friend. I remember how a mere 5 hours away from her felt like too long.”
I immediately called her.
After a full-out “grief session” with Terri’s BFF, I called Miss M’s Papai to check on how she seemed when he dropped her at school. Still shrouded in grief, I drove to the omnipotent ocean, the one place that inevitably washes my heart and soul clean.
By the time I returned home to begin writing this post, the extraordinary bonds engendered by our visionary Graceful Woman Warrior had hijacked cyberspace—Auntie Eryka sending hugs and love, my BFF Peggy and sister-in-law Peggy calling back to back, a call from hubby with a lunch date, Miles for Marisa’s founder, Moe, reaching across the miles to unburden her aching heart, Papai showing me picture after picture of Terri on Facebook at Miss M’s concert —each connection adding another building block of resilience to my being.
But the piece de resistance was the email that arrived today. Jess Stout… Hmmm… Sounded familiar but I couldn’t for the life of me pinpoint who she was so I opened her email:
“Oh my goodness Laura, your email somehow got lost in the cyber shuffle and I am just seeing it now so many months later! I am so sorry that I missed it. Thank you for reaching out, and I hope your project has been going well! Not sure where things stand currently, but I would be very interested in reading if possible….
All the best,
Jess”
Holy shit! Or should I say, Holy Terri?
Jess and I had met at Dedee Shattucks Westport Galllery in 2016 at her book signing. “Feel Me Brave” had begun as a blog to keep her family and friends abreast of her young son’s struggle with an incurable disease. The parallels in our stories were uncanny; Jess was a social worker, her book had started as a blog, she had self-published, and her heartrending portrait of the journey between, through and beyond the death of her precious boy, Ryland, literally had given me the courage to write “Graceful Woman Warrior.”
And here she was, responding to an email I sent her on March 21, 2018, in which I asked if she would consider taking a read of my manuscript and write a book jacket review.
And here I was, receiving her email on December 5th, 2019, nine months after I sent the email.
On Terri’s deathiversary.
I hear you, Terri… I see you, Terri… I miss you, Terri…
With enduring love and gratitude,
Auntie L.
