Silas' Symbols
The hawk is stationary above the highway. The mundane light post is transformed into a majestic perch with the beaked, mottled, patient bird gripping the metal with its talons. It is looking for prey, but it feels like it was waiting for us.
We always point them out to one another on our drives, and not a word has to be spoken. Silas, we both think. Silas there somehow in the penetrating gaze of the bird, even though we don't really believe that, not in any direct, concrete way. It's not his reborn spirit in there. It's not his soul transformed into a hawk.
Instead, it is a living, breathing symbol that we can hang our grief on. Silent, alien, unknowable, beautiful and free, the creature is a perfect specimen of raw nature and it represents so much of what we don't have from Silas, and so much of what we wanted him to be.
Three hawks today. Yesterday I saw one plummet from the sky to the median between the north and soundbound lanes and then leap into the sky with some squirming fur in its grasp. The hawks are reminders of his life in a safe and abstracted way.
After all, it is hard to remember someone you never got to know.
We remember him as an absence, as a lack, and the hawk serves as a placeholder for everything we still don't understand about why Silas is not here with us today.
At night when the hawks sleep Orion captures my vision instead. Pinpricks of light billions of lightyears away arranged just so, and they pierce me with their interstellar light every time. We chose that name for him, selected that specific connection, and it ensures that every single night that our planet faces that part of the sky I see him and think of him and hold him close in my heart.
Closer yet, though, is the ink in my arm. It is a tree of life darkened with death and sprinkled with the stars of his constellation, surrounded by a ring of "S"s. And it's funny/not-funny how much an "S" looks like a broken infinity symbol.
Silas is gone forever, but I still find him every day in pieces of my life. In the hawk above, in the blazing stars of the Universe beyond, in the very fabric of my skin. I will never stop missing him, even when happy, even when feeling good and right.
His name is engraved on the inside of our wedding rings, just like it is etched on the deepest walls of our hearts. The symbols help us remember him as we hoped he would be, but the pain ensures we will never forget the child we do not get to hold in our arms.
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What are the symbols you connect to your lost child or children? Did you create the connection or did some outside force cause you to recognize it? Do those symbols and reminders bring you peace or pain? Have the symbols changed over time?
19 Comments
Reader Comments (19)
But I've experienced pain via my symbolic remembrances too. I have an antique mourning locket with a pinch of her ashes inside that I used to wear. It shattered on our kitchen floor. And I was shattered too.
I recently wrote about this, but the only real symbol that makes me think of Margot is a volleyball, which is a sport I'm not fond of and rarely see, unless we are at the beach or I'm surprised somewhere. It's always this sacred moment. I am much like you - I don't find her soul or spirit there, just a symbol that came out of no where and left me reeling with pain. Now it's mostly a comfort, a sweet thought about my girl who should be living.
Some days I see her in my tattoo, a little circle for my second child.
I wish I could see her in her big sister, and maybe one day that will change, but it's not the way it is now.
Also ladybird. Don't know, why. Because she's a girl, she would have liked ladybirds.
Butterflies. Her soul flew away so softly - just like a butterfly.
Textile diaper. Very profane - but after the c-section, when the midwife brought her in, she was wrapped in a white textile diaper.
A little angel from the X-mas tree. We were still together (alive) during X-mas time. I made a photo with this little angel in front of my belly. Now this angel is on the grave.
Winniw-the-Pooh: it was in the coffin with her.
I see him in the fights my husband and I have which stop short and collapse instead into love and forgiveness, because we both told ourselves in the early days after he was gone, when it was horror and we sometimes took it out on each other, that he wouldn't want this for us, that his existence should make us better versions of ourselves.
I see Sam in Russian dolls also. He left us so early that the only material reminder we have of him is a blanket my mother bought and put away for his arrival as soon as she found out. It's a brightly coloured pattern of cute russian dolls. It now sits on our sofa and gives us great comfort. We bought a matching cushion to go with it. If we're lucky enough to have a living child one day, those will go to that baby, connecting s/he to the older brother.
Thanks for a beautiful post, Chris.
For Liam's 3rd birthday I had a BLM friend to a watercolor ATC of a boy soaring the sky in a hawk costume. I love it and that card is in Liam's scrap book.
my son's name is anton harold. so no obvious associations like with his sister's name. during my pregnancy with him- i saw turtles everywhere. i saw turtles in my dreams during the ivf cycle in which we conceived him. i saw baby hatchling turtles walk across the path when i found out my positive beta. i saw turtles all summer long! very strange, but it comforted me... i liked the outward link to him, growing in my belly. but then he died, and we checked into the l&d, and what is sitting there as the only ornamentation in that little depressing office with the receptionist who would not look us in the eyes? a turtle. and then at the funeral home, in the foyer? a turtle. so, anton has turtles. he also has the flower lily-of-the-valley. he is named after his grandfather on my husband's side, and he was from slovakia, and he loved lily-of-the-valley. it grows all around our house, and in the early summer, the scent of it permiates everything... i smelled it while on bedrest with him, and it gave me comfort- we had named him as soon as we found out we were having a boy, it made me think of his connection to his grandfather. so, when i delivered him, what is the only picture on the wall of the l&d room? a lily-of-the-valley. what is that all about?! oh, and opal. people gave me opal jewelry for his birthstone. they are so pretty, never a stone i would have thought i would like, but i really love it, and it only reminds me of him.
at anton's funeral, he was buried right next to his sister. lots of family and friends came to the funeral, and it was quiet, and after the few speeches etc were done, we got up to leave, and up in the sky, 2 bald eagles circled over head, the entire time that people left- maybe a half hour. when i see bald eagles (they are fairly common here), i think of the 2 of them, together. it really made an impression on the somewhat superstitious italian side of my family. there are stories of feathers being left at family funerals, and when they saw these eagles, they were so relieved and happy that there was a bird there- they connected to that symbol, and i appreciated that because it enabled them to connect to anton, and coral... their relatives, too, even though they never got to see or hold them, they are their cousins, niece, nephew, grandniece, grandnephew, second cousins, etc. some of them still bring up those 2 eagles.
i have little figurines of turtles, crows, roses, coral, and dried lily-of-the-valley all over my house. i like what chris wrote- they are symbols i can hang my grief on. thanks for letting me share this here.
Eva is butterflies to us. When I was pregnant and knew she was a girl, I thought she would be ladybugs, and I love ladybugs...and she is ladybugs too, a little. 11 days before she died, she was released from the hospital and in celebration I bought a large tote that I had admired for weeks. It had ladybugs all over it and she fit inside and we have pictures of her smiling out of that ladybug bag...and I use the ladybug bag all the time now. But still, she is somehow butterflies...and maybe ladybugs too...but I find it hard if too many things represent her because then there's just too much. There are alot of butterflies around and seeing them on the clothing of other children or in the fields...Eva is somehow still with us. Like Chris, I do not feel as if she IS the butterfly...it is just a gentle little reminder that she was, and is always in our hearts. Our little butterfly. At Christmas some friends of ours gave us a rock sandblasted with her name and a butterfly on it. They could not know that butterflies were our special connection to our special little girl and this rock has become one of the most meaningful gifts we were given after Eva died.
Thanks for asking.
I miss him so,so much.
For me the tangible symbols of smell- the soap she used, flowers at her funeral- blue and white hyacinths and a poem by e e cummings are with me always.
I had some of her ashes sealed into a bracelet .
The symbols are a little like my anchors to hold her safe in my heart
I now also have a tattoo of a bird in flight on the inside of my wrist. :)
While pregnant I would smell flowers, mostly purple flowers, and tell Mira about them. Lilacs. We would smell lilacs together. Perhaps it will be harder to smell lilacs without her then her birthday will be?
Mira's paternal grandmother's favorite color is purple. We attributed Mira's conception to a miracle worked by my grandmother who died right before Mira existed. Her favorite color was red. I love both purple and red. In the obituary we asked people to wear red or purple in Mira's honor. A few days after the funeral the number of people (we didn't know)wearing red and purple around town was amazingly high.....guys wearing purple sweaters, purple and red combo outfits.
I misunderstood my husband, I thought that he though Mira was sending all of the purple and red to us as some sort of message. My mom and I gave him a funny look. It was not until months later that I found out that to him it was in fact a symbol, a remembrance...not some message.
I want her, not a remembrance of her. I remember her all the time already.
Ellis also "sends" me snow flakes and falling leaves and butterflies -- just little signs that make me feel like he is watching over me...and wants me to be happy.
XXOO
Emma