The Cora Era and the Passage of Time

In case you didn't know, I had an amazing girl we called Cora Lionheart, who entered this world on a ribbon of grace, and who then quietly left it on July 16, 2013. She was eight-and-a-half months old.

And what a girl she was! Just this tiny thing who radiated goodness, peacefulness and a feeling of acceptance. A girl who was less like a child and more like a great choreographer, bringing people together at the right times, moving us easily toward those we needed.

She was my light. She was our light.

One evening, when I was about eight months pregnant with Cora, I remember sitting on the couch with my husband, Jason, and feeling a very strange sensation radiating from my baby. "Do you think it's possible for a baby to hum?" I asked. We agreed that it would be impossible, but it was the only way I could explain the clear vibration I could feel within me. It wasn't a kick or a movement. It was a feeling, a sound. I felt it a handful of other times in the next weeks, and I remember clearly thinking, no other way to explain it, than that I have a magic baby.

I had more or less forgotten about the magical humming when it was drowned out by a traumatic beginning of life, an intensive care unit, and a mountain of fear. But one evening, as Cora was recovering from her first open-heart surgery, relying on a breathing machine, and littered with more tubes and lines than you could imagine, I held her hand. And all of a sudden, out of her arm and down her fingers, straight through to mine, I felt that old vibration, clear as could be.

I don't care if there is some scientific explanation for the humming. Maybe there is, and maybe it happens all the time. But for me, that feeling just assured me that Cora was a powerful girl. I will always believe that she is the oldest person I've ever met; a deeply spiritual being who came from another place, which I believe is the place of pure and limitless love from where we all came. And that she was here to remind us of that place.

Delicious being of light that she was, it was ever darker after she left.

It's true what they say, and when Cora died, a part of me died too. In the months immediately following, I literally felt as though my chest had been beaten with a baseball bat, and my hips were as sore as someone's who had carried a two hundred-pound load for a very long time. As time passed I began to wish that I lived in a country where the bereaved wear black, visibly in mourning, so that those I met wouldn't ever look to me expecting anything but sadness. I more or less stopped sleeping, because to go to bed was to wake up the next morning and face the reality that it was a Monday or a Thursday, or any day that was somehow carrying on in its same old way, blind to the absence of my most precious, most important girl. Selfish life, just pushing on, day after day. 

That's the thing about life: no matter what, it goes on.

In my heart, as I believe exists in all the broken hearts of all the mothers who have ever lost a child, there is a deep box of an unspeakable sadness. This box contains the most sacred pieces. The overwhelming love I felt for my daughter as I looked into her clear eyes. The fear in my heart as I tried my best to care for her each day. The decision to eventually let her go, to stop fighting, to accept. The memory of her suffering as she worked to leave life, and of my powerlessness to make it any easier. The feeling of holding her quiet, but very warm, little body in my arms for hours after she died. The sound of my shoes as we made that hopeless walk away from her hospital room that very last time. My guilt over the fact that I ever left.

Despite two years having passed, this box in my heart remains unmoved.

For a while after Cora died we were surrounded by Everyone. Our mailbox was filled with cards; our home, with gifts and flowers. There were touching stories of how Cora had changed lives. There were things to eat and things to plant. And with each thing I thought, There now, the world has stopped for a moment, and someone else has recognized that my girl is gone. We passed what would have been her one-year birthday and a giant burst of Cora Love surrounded us. We passed Christmas, Easter, Mother's Day, and all the holidays as they marched on. And finally we passed the first anniversary of Cora's death. On each of these occasions there would be new bursts of Cora Love, but then life would resume its pace, eventually becoming quieter.

The passage of time has been a hard gift for me to receive. I liked it better when I had seen Cora a week or a month before. I missed her less, because I had so recently seen her whole, real self. I could still feel her soft little hands or the exact weight of her in my arms. Her chubby knees. Her adorable toe that forever crossed over the other one.  And her beautiful eyes that seemed to contain within them all the depth, all the love and all the sadness of the whole world. I liked it better when letters about Cora spilled into my inbox, and when I saw pictures of her wherever I went. When everyone I saw brought the subject of Cora up with urgency and importance. It was all, to me, the Cora Era, and even though we were grieving, life made sense in the Cora Era. It was about Love. 

But the more time passes, the longer it's been since I've seen her. Some of my memories are leaving me. The beautiful Cora Era is moving away.

There are many analogies to explain the passing of time, but one that makes sense for me is to imagine myself standing on a very high overlook, surrounded by a warm wind that keeps coming. With it, the wind brings a relentless chain of experiences -- some beautiful, some frustrating, some painful, some unremarkable. But no matter what the experience, the wind, the time, just keeps coming, without pause. It is a constant experience. As soon as it's there, it's gone.

I've struggled to hold on to my beloved Cora memories. To the Cora Era. I've wanted you to hold on too. But I am learning, and I am, in a small way, letting go, and watching, in awe, as the wind goes by. When I think of Cora's grace, I feel that I can. I must respect and appreciate the things that have happened in the Cora Era -- profound, beautiful things. I must regard them with great adoration, while also waving them goodbye.

I believe that in order to live through tragedy, or even through the irritating or ridiculous parts of life, you have to practice radical acceptance. You have to look your life square in the face and say, "can I live with this?" Can I accept this, exactly as it is, with absolutely no footnotes and no conditions? Cora, during her life, and during her death, showed us how to do that brilliantly.

I've never wavered from that place of acceptance.

I have accepted that Cora's life was the life, the perfect life, she was meant to lead. I have to believe that. It's like putting everything I know about anything -- all the colorful small bits -- putting them into my hands like a pile of confetti, taking a deep breath, and blowing them into the wind. I am willing to let it all go, and to accept life, not as I believe it should be, but as it exactly is. That's been, for me, an act of true freedom.

If I do this, if I accept that life goes on, then I believe that the very deep box within my heart, while never going away, will become covered with many new things. These things may be joyous moments or complicated moments or happy/sad moments or grateful moments. These moments will respect the sacredness of that box beneath, while using it as the foundation for new happiness and new beauty. For unpredictable, magnificent life. 

And there are so many beautiful things that have already laid down roots.

As I write this, Cora's deep, magical eyes are staring out at me from the several pictures I have of her around my desk. Hi, sweet girl. You were, and will always be, incredible. You left a true and beautiful (and toe-crossed) footprint in the world, and I love you forever.