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Strength in song: 'We will get by -- We will survive'By MICHELLE MILLER
© St. Petersburg Times, On the morning of Sept. 11, I made a long distance phone call to tell my son I loved him. Then I told him to say a prayer. As always, he had some advice of his own to share. "Go get your In the Dark Grateful Dead CD," he told me, "and listen to Touch of Grey." Playing that song is an old throwback for my son -- one of the coping devices our family came up with when he was about 4 years old and we were were trying to deal with his younger sister's struggle with leukemia. Somehow the ending refrain, We will get by -- We will survive, helped empower us through much of her three-year battle and even after she was gone. In between the tears, the newscasts and the very restless nights of these past weeks, I have followed my son's advice and made it a point to listen to that song. And as before, it has helped. It is a tough time to be a parent. Besides wrestling with our own fears, we must address those of our children -- not an easy task when you're grieving and suffering from a sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome. My own 5-year-old has banished her Barbie airplane to a corner of her room and covered it with one of her baby doll's blankets. "I don't like planes flying into buildings," she tells me. The middle child, who since early on has been consumed with thoughts of the children who went to school one day and lost their parents, has hit me with a barrage of questions that I have no easy answers for. "Why did they do this?" "Why do they hate us?" "Who's going to take care of all those children?" and "What's going to happen next?" I answer her as best as I can, give her another hug and remind her that whatever happens, "We will get by -- We will survive." But more than that, like the flower that has pushed itself up and blossomed in a tiny crevice in the middle of my concrete walkway, I tell her we will try to be resilient. In the 12 years since my daughter's death, I have been fortunate to experience a joy I never thought would be possible again. The birth of two daughters, a son's high school graduation and his going off to college are listed among the "big" events that come to mind. Yet it is also in the quiet recesses of life, the day-to-day happenings that in old times were perhaps overlooked, that I have discovered some of life's greatest pleasures. A red cardinal chirping outside my window, a butterfly alighting at an opportune moment, a warm ray of sunlight gleaming down through forest leaves remind me that amid all the darkness and uncertainty, this is indeed a wonderful world. It has been said that miracles are a matter of perspective, that the most brilliant sunsets come from stormy skies. Now, I think, is a good time to take notice and live.
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From today's Pasco Times |
