dearest rosetaina 'ti rose' 'crank muffin' 'taina' 'ti zwazo' bertrand,
today is the day you might have turned 4 years old if you had not been born HIV positive, or if you hadn't been born so financially poor, or if you had been treated from birth, or if cheez-it crackers were the cure for AIDs....or any of a million other ifs...
today is also the day i will finally say goodbye to you, the day i will stop clinging to who you were in your tiny broken little body and embrace the truth of who and how you are now.
but first i have a few things i need to tell you.
i remember the moment when i first learned that you existed in the world, i remember where i was sitting, and i remember exactly what it felt like.
i remember the way you looked sleeping in the dining room crib the first time i saw you. i remember the moment dorothy sat you on my lap in a tiny blue onesie that swallowed you up. you were so beautiful and precious and important that i didn't even want to touch you with my dirty from the roadtrip hands.
i loved you before i ever laid eyes on you, before i knew your name, before i felt your head resting over my heart, before you and i discovered our shared love of latin music and lime or cheeze flavored junk food, and an inability to work an ipod.
i loved you when you threw up vanilla pediasure down my shirt (again), i loved you when you refused to be bathed unless i was IN the bathtub with you, i loved you when you stole my warm freshly buttered Rosemanie roll and replaced it with your cold half-eaten one.
i loved you when you cried and when you laughed and when you slept and when you refused to fall asleep. i think you get the idea.
i wanted you with me all the time. the only reason i didn't keep you with me every second of every day was because i wanted to believe you would be at dorothy's long after me and so i shouldn't spoil you COMPLETELY as a courtesy to the nannies and to you. somehow, it felt like keeping you all the time would have been to assume you were going to die soon...and i wanted to treat you like a child with a life, not just a child with a disease. its seems ridiculous now and just so you know if i could do it again i would totally suffer the wrath of the nannies for being that annoying white girl who spoils the babies...i would have kept you in our baby sling right by my side as many seconds as physically possible. we both actually have kervens to thank for so many of our days together. somehow he could see right through my guilt complex so he was the one who would bring you upstairs "forcing" me to let you stay with us a while so you wouldn't give the nannies such a fit. God bless that boy.
you never learned to talk before you died but you have spoken into my life in so many ways. i continue to learn from our moments together, and our moments apart.
thank you for teaching me what it means to crawl, how hard and how important it is. thank you for discouraging too much computer use. when i am finding myself in front of this screen for too long i still think of you trying to shut my laptop and it reminds me to consider whether what i am working on is really the best use of the moment. thank you for the times you were stubborn about what you wanted and the times you shared, it has helped me get better at both when the time is right.
there are so many things i could thank you for...the way you made me feel special and important...the way you made us all laugh...the way you made us all think differently about life and about death. all the help with the laundry when you were strapped to by belly :)...the moments you gave me a reason to slow down, to be quiet, to just be. for all the ways you have guided and encouraged and challenged and stretched my heart. who i am becoming and what i will do in the world has a lot to do with knowing and loving you...and with losing you as well. for such a little thing you have made some big waves ti.
knowing you has helped me do a lot of things. even though it was part of why i came back from haiti, i wouldn't have made it to school if it weren't for you. even in dying you managed to help me live better.
about my leaving haiti...i left because i thought it was what i had to do for me and for everyone else in the house - including you. but i need to tell you it was the hardest thing i have ever done. walking away from you that day was so unbelievably painful that i will probably always the physical reaction im having right now just thinking about it. i was such a wreck on the plane i almost caused the guy next to me to have to take another flight. that whole crawling after me bit with the crying and the reaching - not cool missy. but you couldn't walk or talk so i guess it was understandable behavior on your part.
sometimes i wonder if you knew something i didn't...its weird since i knew how sick you were doing so well (shout out to the vertical like on your growth chart at our last appt!) i never dreamed it would be the last time i would see you. i was sure i would be with you again...and also sure i would be with you at the end whenever that did come. i was already gone before the reality of another possibility hit me.
im not sure what i might have done different in saying goodbye - i don't think we would have ever been really good at that no matter what kind of insight we had...i think it would have sucked no matter what.
i don't know exactly how the whole spirit/heaven/eternity thing works in terms of how tuned in you are to things back here but if you have any awareness of this world at all you know how much i regret not going to haiti to be with you at the end. my heart said go and i talked myself into something more logical and sensible,into something easier for other people to accept and understand, easier for me to accomplish and explain. it has taken me a long time to forgive myself for that, which is part of why it has been so hard to come to terms with you being gone. turns out forgiving yourself is much more difficult and humbling than forgiving other people. i guess that is something else you have helped me learn. i know it would have been just as messy and just as awful and probably more so. but i do wish i had been there. i'm sorry i didn't come. i am so sorry baby girl.
and i am so thankful for your mama who was there by your side so faithfully. she loved you so much. i haven't been able to find out anything about how or where she is since the earthquake last january but i have recently decided that i want to try harder. i really want to see her and hug her again if she is still alive. i really want to tell her how amazing her daughter was and how much effect she has had on me, my family, and so many others. how much affect she will always have. i want to thank her for the honor of having you in our home and our lives during such a precious time of your life.
i also want to forgive your father, and maybe even find him too. i'm definitely going to need the Lord's help for both. but i'm realizing that even more so than your mom, it's important that HE know how amazing you were - that would probably go a lot further in changing his heart than just knowing how angry i am. wow, even as i write to tell you what i have learned from knowing you i am learning more....
i know that you will always be a part of me, one that grows and changes with me and that i continue to learn from and to live differently because of...but i know in order for you to be part of a growing and evolving me, i have to let go of the you that you aren't anymore. for so long i just wanted to HOLD you one more time. i always feel you...but i wanted to TOUCH you...but the you that resides in spirit with the Father no longer fits inside that body i wanted to cradle. your spirit is expansive and beautiful and BIG in a way that poor little body could never have had proper room for. it would have always limited you. and i am finally able to see that in wanting you back that way i would only be limiting you too.
now that you are free of it, you are much more YOU, you have room to be as full and as much as you truly are. in letting go of the body i knew as my "ti zwazo" i can make room in my life for who you really are now, who you really always were.
i am looking forward to getting to know you in this way and to carrying your spirit and your beautiful truth with me forever. your presence will always be BIG but it won't be HEAVY anymore. i think that is how my "little bird" would want it.
happy birthday baby.
oh casey
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