Vigils....

We wait, we wonder, we watch, we fiddle, we pace, we glance over our shoulders, we wait some more.   We check our phones, we check our Facebook, we look for new e-mails, we look for new text messages, we look at Twitter.  Somewhere deep in our souls, we know what we are waiting for, and we don't want it to happen, but we can't stop it.  We can't change it.  We just wait.  

Two weeks ago Allistaire left Seattle Children's Hospital for the last time. Sometime early this morning she took her last breath.  True to Allistaire's sense of self, she fought for those last few breaths. 

Allistaire was not ready to go.
Sten wasn't ready for her to leave.
Jai never imagined she would have to leave so soon.  
Solve was certainly not wanting to lose her baby sister.

I don't even know what to say. So I will do the next best thing.  

The Allistaire I knew and came to love believed in magic..... She found it in her short life. 

The vigil has ended. 

  

Allistaire

Sad:  Me

I have been looking for the words to express the feeling when you know someone you have buried deep in the special places in your heart is not going to remain in the physical world.  To learn a six-year-old girl, one you have grown to love is dying, make me Sad.  

Sad. A simple three letter word.  A word with long meaning within our lexicon but still,  only a word.

So I look for meaning. 

Oxford English Dictionary Etiology of Sad

Old English sæd 'sated, weary', also 'weighty, dense', of Germanic origin; related to Dutch zatand German satt, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin satis 'enough'. The original meaning was replaced in Middle English by the senses 'steadfast, firm' and 'serious, sober', and later 'sorrowful'.

The original meaning of sad in Old English was ‘having no more appetite, weary’. The word comes from the same root as Latin satis ‘enough’, the source of satiated, satisfactory, and satisfy (all LME), and the idea was similar to our expression fed up (early 20th century)—of being unhappy through being too ‘full’ of something. The word then developed through ‘firm, constant’ and ‘dignified, sober’ to our modern sense of ‘unhappy’ in the medieval period. In the 1990s ‘You're so sad!’ became the refrain of every teenager in the land, often to their parents. This use, meaning ‘pathetically inadequate or, was not completely new, and had been around since the 1930s.



Shakespear:

sad (adj.) 1 serious, grave, solemn

sad (adj.) 3 downcast, distressed, mournful, gloomy

seriously, gravely, solemnly

“how sad and bad and mad it was - but then, how it was sweet” 

Robert Browning

Sometimes it is okay to sit with the sad.  The tears that come, the moments of pressure on your chest so heavy it inhibits your breathing, the need to eat something chocolate.  

I will take a deep breath.  I will light another candle. I will try to help in some concrete way.  

It is so hard when it is one of our own.  
Another Deep Breath. 


Every Moment of Light and Darkness is a Miracle.  Walt Whitman