The Dreaded Day Has Arrived
Today my daughter, Amara, has been gone from this world for one year. Actually, she died on the 6th of January but wasn’t found and officially proclaimed dead until the 7th. So, I did my heaviest mourning yesterday. My husband and I went and placed a peony arrangement in front of the building she died in, in memory of her. It was hard to do. She started out in life in my loving, nurturing arms. Her life ended in a tiny efficiency apartment inside a run-down apartment building. I had to go see where she took her last breath. I stood outside, taking it all in. When I got home, I crumbled, and I cried myself to sleep.
Today, I watched the video we had made for her when she graduated from high school. It was a compilation of photos and home video clips set to music. I relived her childhood and teenage years—I saw the sparkly, sometimes-outrageous, always-shining, beautiful girl whom I fiercely loved. Amara always knew how to turn a boring day into an adventurous one. She and her friends laughed until they cried, sang songs at the top of their lungs and loved each other with zeal. Amara always had to have at least one friend around. She loved companionship and never liked being alone much.
The Amara in the video is the Amara that I will always remember. She was untouched by the heavy street drugs that ultimately took her life. Her brain was yet unaffected by the substances that turned her into what she became the last few years of her life. She didn’t have the disease of addiction back then—the disease that became terminal for her in the end. She was simply Amara Rose Lee … our Mari … and what a neat, fantastic gal she was!
I have been sad today, but I can feel her nudging me, saying, “Mom. I don’t want you to be sad. I’m in heaven, and gurrrrl, you should see this place! Remember me today and every day, but concentrate on my brother and sisters, my papa and your grandchildren. We’ll be together again soon, Mom. Don’t dwell on how or where I died. Don’t remember how I was in the last years of my disease.
Remember me when I was healthy and happy. Remember the good times, the goofy things we all did, the way we laughed hard at the stupidest little things, how we finished each other’s sentences, made fun of celebrities, played the purse game, laughed at and with Jacob, dressed up the dogs and cats, had make-up sessions with my sissies, watched every episode of ‘This Is Us,’wrote funny stories about weird things and spent many days and nights feeling squatchy. (The whole family had “Going Squatchin’” caps … we swore Bigfoot lived in our woods.)
“Take care of my dog,
Rocko.I know he’
s a poop sometimes; you HAVE to show him who’s boss, Mom. Read more, write more, get out on that trip. Bring my siblings weird vegetables at work like you did to me, love more and don’t ever let anyone forget me. Don’t remember me at my worst. Tell my nieces and nephews that Tante Mari got sick and had to leave, but they’re in my heart, and I can’t wait to meet them, too, someday.
“Mom, I know you’re hurting, but please try to be happy. I didn’t mean to leave you like this; I didn’t mean to hurt you. Please forgive me. Feel my arms around you now and forever. When you get up here, we will never leave each other’s side. Always and forever your baby I’ll be.”
That’s the Amara I choose to remember today … and every day.