Faith

This is one of my favorite pictures of Taryn.  I love how she's smiling and her hair looks so natural.  I can see her looking right into me and she did that a lot.  It's a feeling of comfort that comes over me when I stare into her eyes.  She was a very passionate woman.  She'd speak her mind and didn't care if it offended someone because it was important to her to speak the truth as she knew it.  I think she would have affected great change in the world if she'd been able to live a long life.  She wasn't afraid of much.  She had courage and spoke up for those who couldn't speak up for themselves.  I knew she would do great things in her life because she was so strong in some important ways.  In other ways she doubted herself and that was the confusing paradox that was Taryn.  I admired her and looked up to her in so many ways because she WAS so straight forward and real.  

She backed this guy right off our front porch once yelling at him when he abandoned a few puppies on our door step.  She screamed at him "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU???"  He was a doctor, a therapist actually.  I just stood there in awe.  She scared him to death, I will never forget the look on his face.  He needed to be scared because what he did was unthinkable.  That's the kind of stuff she did.  She called it as she saw it.  She was fiercely protective of the innocent, the weak, and the ones she loved.  She was protective of me.  She and I fought about things same as any daughter and mother but no one else could fight with me or she would get upset with them.  

I tried so hard for years to get her to stop smoking.  I presented the best arguments and all the logic on the planet and a few times she actually tried but would always come back to it.  I told her she would look old before her time and that finally got to her.  The wrinkles and "hard" look women have when they spend years breathing in nicotine and spoiling their youthful skin.  She also quit because she wanted a baby and knew that she had to be good to her body if she was going to grow a human being in it.  I was very impressed that she did so many things right for Kayan.  She researched pregnancy and knew what she needed to do to stay healthy.  Her diet completely changed too.  All for him.  This baby she was going to have was everything to her.  Everything.  She wouldn't eat certain foods and got lots of sleep.  She tried so hard to do everything right for Kayan and herself.  I kept thinking about that after she was gone.  All the things she did to prevent trouble didn't stop what happened to them. 

No one knew.  It was there in her body like a silent killer waiting to take her life and no one knew.  I thought about that a lot.  How hard she tried to avoid any problems.  Even when we do everything right things can still go wrong.  Horribly wrong.  We can't avoid bad things that happen to us.  There are going to be good things and there are going to be bad things.  No matter what we do.  We can't save the people we love.  Sometimes it won't work out.  That was such a brick wall that hit hard for me.  I kept thinking I could have done something, anything, and changed what happened but I couldn't.  

I still look up into the clouds on days when I'm sad and wonder about the logic behind all this.  Birth and death and all that's in between.  Even the earth benefits from what dies and drifts back into the soil so it fertilizes the new growth.  Even Virginia Wolf wrote that someone has to die in order for the rest of us to appreciate life more.  Ironically she committed suicide.  It's this cycle though.  No matter what we do it's still going to be there.  

She left so much of herself in me.  I'm grateful for that.  I'm grateful that I hear what she would have said in my mind when I need to.  Maybe that imprint is what matters.  Maybe if it's deep enough it will carry our loved ones through the hard times and bring us near when they need us.  I had 27 years with her.  I have so many memories of her that I feel overwhelmed by them sometimes.  Like I live for us both now.  

We don't know what happens after death.  We guess.  We tell ourselves that the dearly departed whisper to us and sometimes they might, who knows?  The only way to solve that mystery is to die.  Then we know.  But since there's no way of coming back from that we just have to have Faith.  Faith that there is more.  Faith that live doesn't end here.  Faith that when we do die that our loved ones will carry that part of us in them that comforts them when they need us and we can't be there for them.  Faith that this will all make sense at that moment of clarity once life is over.  That's a LOT of faith!