Thursday, May 12, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Cinco
I struggle with how do we mark Sylvie’s birthday and other anniversaries. I read somewhere that as a society, we celebrate when a ship comes home, not when it sinks (except perhaps when the sinking of ships started world wars). Anyway, Sylvie should be turning five today, May 12, and we should be celebrating with her here on this earth. Toasting to her potential reached thus far. Potential reached at 3.5 years old. We feel totally robbed and that Sylvie was robbed of reaching her potential, too. I used to keep a red journal in the car and when Sylvie was a baby, I’d write her letters with the intention of presenting it to her when she was older. I’ve long since misplaced the journal but on the eve of Sylvie’s fifth birthday, I decided to write her a birthday letter.
Dear Sylvie,
Today is your fifth birthday and like any other day, your dad and I are so proud to be your mommy and daddy. We talk about you all the time, look at pictures of you a million times a day and reminisce (fancy for "talk about things that happened a long time ago") about all the places we went to and things we did. And sweetie-- sometimes you gave us a very hard time! But we love you so tremendously just the same. Even when you would tell people that you don’t like them, we are proud because you are truthful and we don't like everyone all the time either.
We wish you were here for us to celebrate this special day and I personally wish that I could be making “Sylvie’s Fifth Birthday Greatest Hits” to share with your friends. I’m sure you would love Sleigh Bells, Peter Bjorn, Lady Gaga and Enrique Iglesias. I have a feeling you would also like the Black Eyed Peas in which we’d have to have our first grown up talk about “good music” versus “bad music.” Your auntie Jodie would have given you something from Miley Cyrus. Auntie Polina—something fabulous and fancy that you’d wear for a week straight. Tita Cindy—something custom made from Etsy. Megan would have given you a new bag of marbles because I keep telling her that I don’t know where yours are. Grandma’s and Grandpa’s—your first American Girl doll(s). Jette & Nevada would have made you something and Samantha would have picked something out herself.
But you’re not here. And it’s your birthday. I can only imagine what you are wearing. Polina’s turquoise dress which you wore for a week straight in LBI. Samantha’s polka dot dress or one of the three matching dresses you both wore constantly. Or the pink plaid silk dress from Hanna Andersen which I had been saving for a very special occasion. Not your funeral.
Daddy would have ordered a special cake from Ciao For Now plus mini cupcakes although Cindy brought over Baked By Melissa ones for New Year’s and I know you’d like them better, especially the tie-dyed ones.
Spencer and Ryan hear about you all day long. I know you visit them because sometimes they get this joyful look in their eyes as if there is someone else in the room making them smile and I know you are there. They would have given you the new Disney princess movie on DVD, “Tangled.”
In 3.5 years, you gave your daddy and me the ability to be silly, to act compassionate, to name all the Disney Princesses, Barbie, too! To sing badly out loud all day long, to cry in public places and be okay with it, to put our family before anyone or anything else and to love like never before and never since.
Make a wish and blow out your candles.
Dear Sylvie,
Today is your fifth birthday and like any other day, your dad and I are so proud to be your mommy and daddy. We talk about you all the time, look at pictures of you a million times a day and reminisce (fancy for "talk about things that happened a long time ago") about all the places we went to and things we did. And sweetie-- sometimes you gave us a very hard time! But we love you so tremendously just the same. Even when you would tell people that you don’t like them, we are proud because you are truthful and we don't like everyone all the time either.
We wish you were here for us to celebrate this special day and I personally wish that I could be making “Sylvie’s Fifth Birthday Greatest Hits” to share with your friends. I’m sure you would love Sleigh Bells, Peter Bjorn, Lady Gaga and Enrique Iglesias. I have a feeling you would also like the Black Eyed Peas in which we’d have to have our first grown up talk about “good music” versus “bad music.” Your auntie Jodie would have given you something from Miley Cyrus. Auntie Polina—something fabulous and fancy that you’d wear for a week straight. Tita Cindy—something custom made from Etsy. Megan would have given you a new bag of marbles because I keep telling her that I don’t know where yours are. Grandma’s and Grandpa’s—your first American Girl doll(s). Jette & Nevada would have made you something and Samantha would have picked something out herself.
But you’re not here. And it’s your birthday. I can only imagine what you are wearing. Polina’s turquoise dress which you wore for a week straight in LBI. Samantha’s polka dot dress or one of the three matching dresses you both wore constantly. Or the pink plaid silk dress from Hanna Andersen which I had been saving for a very special occasion. Not your funeral.
Daddy would have ordered a special cake from Ciao For Now plus mini cupcakes although Cindy brought over Baked By Melissa ones for New Year’s and I know you’d like them better, especially the tie-dyed ones.
Spencer and Ryan hear about you all day long. I know you visit them because sometimes they get this joyful look in their eyes as if there is someone else in the room making them smile and I know you are there. They would have given you the new Disney princess movie on DVD, “Tangled.”
In 3.5 years, you gave your daddy and me the ability to be silly, to act compassionate, to name all the Disney Princesses, Barbie, too! To sing badly out loud all day long, to cry in public places and be okay with it, to put our family before anyone or anything else and to love like never before and never since.
Make a wish and blow out your candles.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Strides For Sylvie 2011?
It’s the time of year for Strides For Sylvie and I’ve been tardy posting any information about what our plans are. My apologies.
Strides For Sylvie has raised nearly $50,000 for the Tomorrows Children’s Fund at HUMC via the Ridgewood Run over the past two years, a special concert and the various raffle prizes. This does not count the hundreds of friends, family and co-workers who have donated monies to TCF in honor and memory of Sylvie.
This year we are letting team Strides For Sylvie loose all over the globe. We've received worldwide heartfelt condolences and outreach from friends, family, former co-workers, total strangers and scores of people whose lives Sylvie enriched. So whether you live in Ridgewood, New Jersey and are running the Ridgewood Run or Katmandu, we would love if the next time you ran, walked, potato-sacked, or three legged hopped across a finish line, that you ran it for Sylvie and helped raise funds for the Tomorrows Children's Fund. Sun salutation yogathons at your favorite yoga studio are also welcomed!
To enable you to do this we have created a home site on Crowdrise.com to make it perfectly simple for you to raise money and takes the pain in the buttness out of filling out fundraising forms, shaking down your donors and collecting checks. It’s so easy that yes, even our mom’s can do it! Please register your event today!
Our friend Simon is riding from Boston to Vermont in memory of Sylvie; Our friend Leena is running the Brooklyn half-marathon, too. They’re awesome people whose families and children are some of our closest friends (Sylvie’s too) so please support them!
Here are links:
http://www.crowdrise.com/stridesforsylvie/fundraiser/princesssylvie
Simon’s:
http://www.crowdrise.com/SimonOddy
Leena’s:
http://www.crowdrise.com/brooklynhalfmarathon/fundraiser/LeenaBansal
Strides For Sylvie has raised nearly $50,000 for the Tomorrows Children’s Fund at HUMC via the Ridgewood Run over the past two years, a special concert and the various raffle prizes. This does not count the hundreds of friends, family and co-workers who have donated monies to TCF in honor and memory of Sylvie.
This year we are letting team Strides For Sylvie loose all over the globe. We've received worldwide heartfelt condolences and outreach from friends, family, former co-workers, total strangers and scores of people whose lives Sylvie enriched. So whether you live in Ridgewood, New Jersey and are running the Ridgewood Run or Katmandu, we would love if the next time you ran, walked, potato-sacked, or three legged hopped across a finish line, that you ran it for Sylvie and helped raise funds for the Tomorrows Children's Fund. Sun salutation yogathons at your favorite yoga studio are also welcomed!
To enable you to do this we have created a home site on Crowdrise.com to make it perfectly simple for you to raise money and takes the pain in the buttness out of filling out fundraising forms, shaking down your donors and collecting checks. It’s so easy that yes, even our mom’s can do it! Please register your event today!
Our friend Simon is riding from Boston to Vermont in memory of Sylvie; Our friend Leena is running the Brooklyn half-marathon, too. They’re awesome people whose families and children are some of our closest friends (Sylvie’s too) so please support them!
Here are links:
http://www.crowdrise.com/stridesforsylvie/fundraiser/princesssylvie
Simon’s:
http://www.crowdrise.com/SimonOddy
Leena’s:
http://www.crowdrise.com/brooklynhalfmarathon/fundraiser/LeenaBansal
Old Post New Tricks
I wrote this obviously nearly six weeks ago and never posted. I have a lot of backlog stuff that I want to post so I thought I’d start here. We’re entering the precarious danger zone that would be Sylvie’s fifth birthday, on May 12th.
March 2011
Michael lit two birthday candles on March 13 which were submerged in the thick icing of German Chocolate and Red Velvet cupcakes. I consciously wished for something I knew would never come true—that sounds and is so helpless and pathetic, I know. I can tell you the wish because it’s not going to make it any less likely to come true—For Sylvie to physically be with us on my birthday.
Holidays are totally meaningless to me. I don’t want presents. I feel totally ungrateful because no material object stacks up to what I really want and can’t have. So I’d rather disappear around any holiday. It’s going to be very difficult to celebrate holidays with the twins, something I’ll have to really try hard to work around my own emotions since obviously, we are going to have festive celebratory events in our life again even though mentally, I am just not there.
I love Michael and Michael loves me. Intensely and infinitely. Together we love Spencer and Ryan. But each of our love for Sylvie is far greater which is a weird thing to comprehend. I can’t wrap my head around it. Seriously, think about it for a moment. We love Sylvie independently of each other and that love is stronger than any other love either of us have for any human being. We don’t talk about it because we love one another so much and naturally our new little guys, too. And it’s just weird and sad. I realize, or I should point out that our therapist reminded us, that when anyone has another child, they may question how to share their love and often feel a little guilty about it.
Of course Spencer and Ryan will grow up knowing all about their sister. I tell everyone about her. It’s only a matter of time before people think I’m insane and talk about it behind my back. I’ll be the old beggar lady mistaken for being drunk in synagogue who is praying to God when I’m actually having a conversation with my deceased little girl.
Randomly, several of my friends who were home sick this winter, watched an episode of Oprah featuring the Coble family who lost all three of their children in an awful accident. The family then made a pact to not commit suicide or do anything to put their own lives at risk (and thus join their kids in ‘heaven’) and then conceived triplets via IVF. Anyway, my friends independent of one another asked me if Michael and I ever had those kinds of feelings. And I have to say that I’m very committed to my time here on earth with my amazing family although don’t think for a second that when I’m on an airplane (those who really know me know that I have an absurd fear of flying that makes me very unpleasant to sit next to on a plane), I frequently consider that if the plane crashed and I died, well, I know a very special little girl who will hopefully be waiting there for me. When Ryan + Spencer were born, I had to fill out several post partum depression questionnaires at the hospital and I wanted to write in: MY DAUGHTER DIED SO IT IS NORMAL AND I AM ALLOWED TO BE SAD, TOO. I AM NOT DEPRESSED.
Michael woke me one night to ask me how I felt about faith. And could I ever have faith again. I told him that in my sleep-deprived state, I needed to think about it because I have faith in knowing Sylvie’s spirit is with me but do I have faith in a higher power? Um, I can’t answer that.
When we were at our friends’ son’s third birthday party a few weeks ago and one of Sylvie’s former classmates whizzed past me only to stop short, look up at me and say, “I MISS SYLVIE. SHE WAS HERE FOR TOO SHORT A TIME.”
Or that Sunday, my niece Megan said to me, “SYLVIE’S NOT HERE BUT SHE CAN STILL TALK.”
To both little girls, I told them that I agreed. I’m not sure if or what the right answer is but I believe in the survival of the human spirit.
March 2011
Michael lit two birthday candles on March 13 which were submerged in the thick icing of German Chocolate and Red Velvet cupcakes. I consciously wished for something I knew would never come true—that sounds and is so helpless and pathetic, I know. I can tell you the wish because it’s not going to make it any less likely to come true—For Sylvie to physically be with us on my birthday.
Holidays are totally meaningless to me. I don’t want presents. I feel totally ungrateful because no material object stacks up to what I really want and can’t have. So I’d rather disappear around any holiday. It’s going to be very difficult to celebrate holidays with the twins, something I’ll have to really try hard to work around my own emotions since obviously, we are going to have festive celebratory events in our life again even though mentally, I am just not there.
I love Michael and Michael loves me. Intensely and infinitely. Together we love Spencer and Ryan. But each of our love for Sylvie is far greater which is a weird thing to comprehend. I can’t wrap my head around it. Seriously, think about it for a moment. We love Sylvie independently of each other and that love is stronger than any other love either of us have for any human being. We don’t talk about it because we love one another so much and naturally our new little guys, too. And it’s just weird and sad. I realize, or I should point out that our therapist reminded us, that when anyone has another child, they may question how to share their love and often feel a little guilty about it.
Of course Spencer and Ryan will grow up knowing all about their sister. I tell everyone about her. It’s only a matter of time before people think I’m insane and talk about it behind my back. I’ll be the old beggar lady mistaken for being drunk in synagogue who is praying to God when I’m actually having a conversation with my deceased little girl.
Randomly, several of my friends who were home sick this winter, watched an episode of Oprah featuring the Coble family who lost all three of their children in an awful accident. The family then made a pact to not commit suicide or do anything to put their own lives at risk (and thus join their kids in ‘heaven’) and then conceived triplets via IVF. Anyway, my friends independent of one another asked me if Michael and I ever had those kinds of feelings. And I have to say that I’m very committed to my time here on earth with my amazing family although don’t think for a second that when I’m on an airplane (those who really know me know that I have an absurd fear of flying that makes me very unpleasant to sit next to on a plane), I frequently consider that if the plane crashed and I died, well, I know a very special little girl who will hopefully be waiting there for me. When Ryan + Spencer were born, I had to fill out several post partum depression questionnaires at the hospital and I wanted to write in: MY DAUGHTER DIED SO IT IS NORMAL AND I AM ALLOWED TO BE SAD, TOO. I AM NOT DEPRESSED.
Michael woke me one night to ask me how I felt about faith. And could I ever have faith again. I told him that in my sleep-deprived state, I needed to think about it because I have faith in knowing Sylvie’s spirit is with me but do I have faith in a higher power? Um, I can’t answer that.
When we were at our friends’ son’s third birthday party a few weeks ago and one of Sylvie’s former classmates whizzed past me only to stop short, look up at me and say, “I MISS SYLVIE. SHE WAS HERE FOR TOO SHORT A TIME.”
Or that Sunday, my niece Megan said to me, “SYLVIE’S NOT HERE BUT SHE CAN STILL TALK.”
To both little girls, I told them that I agreed. I’m not sure if or what the right answer is but I believe in the survival of the human spirit.
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