I Saved Her

Christine died twelve years ago today.

Life was hard for a time. Things got easier when I became a parent. After Christine’s death my twenties had been a boat unmoored from it’s slip; when Marta was born I made the decision to scuttle the boat on the spot. Anchor through the hull, this is it, if the “boat adrift at sea” was the problem we can just sink the boat. If you need me I will be parenting my little family as well and as hard as I can, even at the bottom of the ocean if I have to.

And things became good. Marta Christine had arrived and my family was growing instead of winnowing.

It wasn’t lost on me that I had spent everyday of my life up to Christine’s death living under the same roof with her, then after her exit, I packed up her things from our shared college house waiting for the next “Christine” to move in.

Marta Christine received her name, and so many more of the relics. Her baby blanket is the “Christine Blanket”, which was a seeming throwaway purple fleece blanket adorned with a giant fairy that I can’t place where it came from but it was on her bed the morning after her death. Her “Big Girl Room” is moon-and-stars themed with pink accents and the Certificate of Star Registry that my friends bought for me after her death (hey, what do you get a friend for his birthday whose sister just tragically died!?) is over her bed with Christine Renee Maier’s star near Ursa Major circled. Her bookshelves are filled with “Christine Classics” like her copy of Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen and anything Maurice Sendak or Shel Silverstein. I recently dug out Christine’s etch-a-sketch to present to Marta on a rainy day, which she calls her “other tablet” and takes about as much interest in as any child would downgrading from an iPad.

So lost in this ritual, I forgot that I might even have more children someday (who knew!) who might want a keepsake. Sorry Jane.

The conversations about Christine with Marta aren’t hard to have. At three years old she knows that Christine is my sister who can’t be here, but instead left things for her like her name and her baby blanket, no different than the gifts she receives from her other Aunts and Uncles.

At bedtime last week we were working through a version of this edification. It was story time and I asked if she wanted Where the Wild Things are and her eyes lit up, not because she cares much for the book, but because I let her jump up and down on the bed and “RUMPUS” when King Max orders the wild rumpus to begin.

After the rumpus, which was a very good rumpus, I told her that this was Christine’s book and it was her favorite book because she was a wild thing, and that Christine let her have her book and her name because she (Marta) was a wild thing too.

I let this sink in on Marta for a moment. At three she is on the cusp of abstract thought and I could tell that she was chewing on something in there.

“Daddy?”

“Yes baby?”

“Christine gave this to me?” Clutching her tattered copy against her chest.

“Yes she did she wanted you to have it.”

“Daddy?”

“Yes baby?”

“I… I saved her?”

And things go to pieces again. The waves rise and crash over Max’s private boat, and I cried as hard as I ever had holding 26 pounds of Marta as I tell her it’s okay that daddy is crying and I am just so happy that it hurts me.

I hope Marta wasn’t too scarred by the outburst, days later she demanded that I “BE HAPPY AGAIN” and when I told her that daddy is always happy she yelled “NO THE OTHER HAPPY!” and tried to pry open my eyelids to look for tears.

I have learned that children are born with a cunning ability to find your weakest spot, and mine is glaring.

I spent today’s grim anniversary much as I do every previous one, which is keeping busy. I think Megan knows this and generally clears out of my way. The overriding sensation in me isn’t melancholy or sadness and grief but just that time can’t be wasted, not today.

And I miss Christine the most in the late summer.

As a ritual, after any particularly long and perfect day, those weekend moments with friends and family you spend all week working towards where you hit the pillow at night giddy and exhausted, I tell myself what I imagine the story of Christine’s last day was like. A late August day on the water with her best friends and new love interest. Crabs and beers and boat rides and staying up late to watch a movie and to likely consummate that new love. Being the last to go to bed and putting her head down on her pillow after nineteen years on earth, going to sleep and then dying.

Today, twelve years later, was a different day. The overriding heat and humidity spread thunderstorms pockmarked across the area in unpredictable intervals and one whipped up shortly after Marta Christine had fallen asleep. The thunder led to shrieking for daddy, and I made my summary late night entrance to calm her.

“Daddy I heard thunder!”

“That’s just daddy’s heart beating extra loud baby” (I’m telling you I was born for this parenting thing.)

I wrap her tight in her Christine blanket and lie down next to her.

“Do you have your Mary Lamb (#1 stuffed animal)?”

“Yes!” Mary Lamb receives a reassuring squeeze.

“Do you have your Christine Blanket that protects you from everything?”

“Yes!” She pulls her head into her blanket like a turtle obscuring her face from the nose down.

“I think my job here is done then” I try to extract myself until…

“Daddy, I love her!”

“Who do you love baby?”

“Christine, I love her, she is my best girl”

For a moment, I’m thrown into the lurch. A day spent with my head down not stewing over the beckoning storm of emotions is nearly lost, until I peer closer at Marta in the dark and I see her Cheshire cat grin peeking out of her blanket as she stares at my eyes for what she is expecting to happen next.

As I said, being a parent exposes you and your children will be the first to figure you out.

“Daddy is very happy Marta, now go to sleep”