#3

Julie's Third Letter to Ava Gray:
 
Kiddo, boy you are speaking to me. I am hearing, love, I am hearing. An Instagram post from the mom of a non-speaking autistic kiddo passed along this message from her kid, and I heard your voice and our story in it as I read;
 
“I WOULD LIKE OTHERS TO KNOW HOW INTENSELY I FEEL EVERYTHING ABOUT THEM. THERE’S NO HIDING FROM ME. I FEEL YOUR GUILT COVERED IN A SMILE, YOUR EXHAUSTION WRAPPED IN A HUG. I LOVE YOUR EMOTIONS AND EXPERIENCE THEM ALONGSIDE YOU. I NEED YOU TO RECOGNIZE AND ACKNOWLEDGE HOW YOU FEEL NO MATTER WHAT, NO MATTER HOW DREADFUL YOU MIGHT THINK THEY ARE. I’M HERE TO HELP YOU FEEL AND PROCESS THEM. WE RUN INTO TROUBLE WHEN YOU TRY TO FEEL SOMETHING OTHER, SOMETHING YOU DEEM MORE ACCEPTABLE. THEN IT’S UP TO THIS UNRULY BODY TO SHOW YOU THE ERROR IN YOUR WAYS. IT’S A PAINFUL PROCESS FOR ALL OF US.
 
FEEL WITHOUT GUILT. FEEL IN YOUR BODY.
 
IT’S ALL VALID. YOU’LL FEEL MORE ALIVE AS A RESULT.”
 
Avie, I am learning. Too slowly and a little too late, I sometimes lament, but then I remember that we are all right on time, and that your life and your leaving were also right on time, and I can’t berate myself for not knowing what I didn’t yet know. And yet I grieve, sweet girl, for the missed opportunities to talk lovingly to you about these things while your delicate little hands were still physically wrapped in mine. I am sorry. I know you know that. I hear your “of course, mama!” all the time. And yet there is a deep anguish at having you leave before I could hear your precious heart and thoughts and feelings. You deserved all the love and comfort I could give you, and but I was still in the beginning lessons of how to give you those things. I know you are not angry with me (although it would be okay if you were), but I feel the walls of my regret keeping me locked up and away from where you are – where love resides. I am fighting to come out into the light of wild love, my daughter, and it may take me a minute, but I will get there. Forgiving myself for not knowing how to love you better is the hardest task at hand right now. Forgiving myself for the ways I gave up on myself and lost hope for both of us. May my regret be alchemized into a compassion so deep and real that no darkness can touch it. I love you, and even now my love is trapped in a body that has limitations, but the flame in my heart loves the flame in yours with the fire of a thousand suns, and it will never falter or dim with any amount of time. I am calling out the real and truest me, Ava Gray. You are here and I sense your encouragement and excitement as I step forward and then step forward again. You are simply the best, love. You and your sissie. How did I ever get so lucky as to be your mother? It is my greatest joy. My love for you still gives my life structure and direction and passion – the things that you and Finn are about stir me to love this world in such specific ways. You are wrapped up in every new adventure I set out on. You two are my “why it matters” when my heart falters. The lessons you lived out with me have stuck, darling, and I am going into a sort of collage now to learn even more. Thank you is what I most want to say today. Thank you for coming and living a life that held so much hardship and yet for shining out so brightly with love that you transformed our thoughts about…everything. I will never stop crying and laughing and loving at the whisper of your name. You are gone from the specific bed you lived much of your life in, and now you are everywhere. I see you in the purple flowers along almost every roadside in Nashville. I hear you in the stories and in the silences. I love you!
 
                           Love, mama.