Forever Cold Pink
By Audrey Taylor
It has been more than a year since Danica died. My husband says the speed of it is a mercy. But time, to me, is nonsense. How can her last summer be two years past? Just yesterday, she was my little girl.
Danica had just turned 5 when she died. I emerged from her hospice with a burgeoning belly, 18 weeks pregnant. People would ask me the usual questions: “Oh, is this your first?” No, it’s my 4th…but I couldn’t say that. There would be dismay and jokes. “Too many” kids. Once, I did say it was my fourth, and someone asked me if I’d lost my mind. (I smiled and said yes, at least once or twice. For different reasons than she was thinking, of course…but I didn’t get into that).
When our beautiful new baby was a few months old, strangers admired her curls, and her doting big brothers, pushing her in the stroller. “Finally, a girl!” they said, smiling. We smiled back, frozen stupidly. “Now THIS is a nice age gap,” they continued. “My mother put us too close; I don’t even remember my sister when she was that age.”
Yikes. Things just hit differently these days. I could see the looks on my husband and oldest son’s faces: were they thinking what I was? That actually, we didn’t do this, we miss the old age gap, and we really hope the brothers remember their sister, who is now dead? As we walked away, I could see my husband deciding what he should have said. I told him, “You don’t owe anyone a response. It will be you, not them, that cries about this later.”
Picture a city, bombed to dust. We are the dust.
But I forgot — it’s been a year…right? So we’re good now.
When she was sick, we used humor to skitter across thin ice to get safely to the other side. But now, there is no other side. We live on the ice, it is always thin, and she is always right underneath. Sometimes, we are still very funny. But no one actually handles stress well. The cracks are there, they are just waiting for their moment to shine.
My children wrestle in their own ways. Because children’s grief looks different, people often believe kids are too young to be impacted hugely; but that’s reductive and false. The weight is the same. Kids are tender shoots, uncalloused by the burdens of age, so the pain must be distributed differently in order that they bear it. They do not always grieve with tears; they may do it through a smile and a story; laughing the loudest. It might be through the grave assertion that Danica would have liked the pink one. It might be anger, disobedience, or noticing that no one else has the same holes. A child may mentally assent to understanding the mechanics of death, but the mistake is on us if we do not recognize they simply cannot fathom the true scope of the separation.
Hawkins appears still to not understand what death is — his fourth birthday was this week, and he asked again for the millionth time if Danica can come home tomorrow, or can he go see her? He sometimes gets upset when he is told this is impossible. It is not merely that he doesn’t understand — it’s that he doesn’t like the truth. I understand that. My brain struggles to grasp the enormity of the horror, too. His magical thinking won’t last forever, and when it goes away, it will bring fresh grief for both of us. I know, because I’ve done this before with Gus…and I am sure I will do it again with Mercy Rose.
The sibling relationship should be the longest of a person’s lifetime, and every point in which it is not, there will be grief.
Therefore, I have had to really think about how to respond to the phrase, “I’m so sorry.” A lifetime of polite muscle memory always tempts me to say, “It’s ok.” But it is not at all ok. So I have decided to say, “Thank you. It’s the worst.”
It is foolish to tell the whole truth, but it is terrible to not be able to. Her very name is retired. Danica. The beautiful name I chose and spoke so lovingly all those years. I miss how she said it when she introduced herself, her sweet little manner. I have wanted to talk about her, to talk about what she loves. But there is nowhere for her to come in. I can’t tell you what she is learning lately, what her favorite subject is, or her new favorite movie, or what she wants to be when she grows up. I want to tell you what she would have loved. She would have loved the pink one. The “cold pink” one — which, I think, means fuchsia. She would have asked me if I am sad. But there is nowhere for me to bring her up; she only becomes relevant if someone happens to die. And yet I will miss her always, and at every milestone. When her friends’ faces change with age, when they grow in stature, when they graduate, when they get married and have kids, I will miss her. She can’t ask me if I am sad…and I always pick cold pink because I am thinking of Danica Jane, who was my little girl just yesterday…today, and tomorrow.
Who would have ever thought simple questions would be so complicated to answer? I do not like to lie, but what is a mother to do when we are always casually discussing my greatest wound? It leaves me in a never ending game of two truths and a lie. “I’ve had four children, one of them is dead, and…”
When asked how I am, the traditional response is to say that I’m very well, thanks. Therefore, to have a normal conversation, I sometimes silently adjust my definition of “good” to include “the first stop this side of hell.”
May is brain cancer awareness month. Brain cancer is the leading cause of kids’ cancer-related death in the United States. One in four kids diagnosed with brain cancer will not survive. Danica’s tumor, in particular — Atypical Teratoid Rhabdoid Tumor — has a 5-year survival rate of 32%, and as low as that number is, many still die after that mark. Those survival numbers have remained stagnant for more than 20 years. When we talk about a fatal pediatric cancer, it must be understood that it takes the lives of children like Danica, who make the world a better place. Their deaths spawn what is almost an umbrella of diseases in the suffering of their families.
