Pieces of my Heart

...I wanted my last entry of 2008 to be meaningful... so, i wrote this in July to remember her "Angel Day," which is what we refer to as the anniversary of her death. This was our second Angel Day without Jacque and for two years in a row, we have spent it at a very secluded beach house healing our hearts...

Jacque and I used to wander the beaches looking for the most perfect of shells. We collected everything from the sand dollars on Pismo Beach to the eclectic selection found on the gulf shores of the Texas coast. We started this when she was a very small girl, always bringing home the large baggies filled with the most awesome collections of shells ever. We spent days hunched over the shoreline looking, digging in the sand, and stealing from the beach these little treasures all our own. I remember those days so clearly… so very, very clear to me the images of my daughter’s laughter and total joy at finding each miracle made from God’s creation. I even have a glass bowl filled with out most recent collection in the family room. I miss that, you know. In a way that touches my heart still today: that common thread of our backs to the sun and our feet in the sand. We were definitely beach girls from the very beginning and we enjoyed many seasons at many, many beaches. Children are gifts from God and they bring with them such profound joys. This shell hunting was one of those profound joys for me, each time we did it together.

When I lost my little girl to Heaven that July 2006, I felt as if my heart shattered into a million pieces. That fragile part of my soul that took such joy in her existence, that untouched beauty and fearless part of my life was over, again shattered. Like delicate blown glass, stretched thin and globe-like, my heart was fragile and now completely broken. I would’ve never imagined that my Jacque would go on before me. I couldn’t have fathomed the depth of the pain and total destruction to my life as I knew it. That first year was so raw and so completely filled with the protective mechanisms of shock and bewilderment. I thank God for shock, as it helps keep that even more incredible pain at bay, letting in only the little bits and pieces I could handle. Still that pain was so overwhelming, there are not words invented or created that tell the whole story.
One the first anniversary of Jacque’s death, we borrowed a beach house on the Bolivar Peninsula from a dear friend and escaped the misery of being home, hoping to elude the phone calls, emails, and constant touch of reality in our lives. We were running for a safe place to huddle and hunker down against the impending storm. As those who have lost a child know the anticipation of the anniversaries and birthdays and other milestones that allow us our memories can be just as overwhelming and sometimes harder than the actual day itself. There are such fluctuations in our hearts that cannot be explained. Regardless, we traveled as a safe unit, our family minus one, to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to look for some healing.

Out on that beach I found that my soul ached for my daughter, even more than I had anticipated. I was hoping that it would bring me comfort in some way, to feel as if she were with me. There were moments when she was right beside me and I started again to collect the shells… the striped ones and the ones that reflected the mother of pearl opulence, the perfect edges, and the scalloped ridges, all of them… I held them all close to my heart, but they had lost their magic to me. I didn’t want to keep them or steal them away from the shore any more. The shells had lost their intrinsic value without my daughter’s laughter. Without my Jacque, those shells weren’t as beautiful as before. They just aren’t the same.

So, I took those large baggies filled with what I thought would give me hope and ease my pain and I began placing each shell on the sand. One by one, above the tide level, I placed each shell until I had spelled out “I miss you mo’.” When she was just a little girl, still filled with wet kisses and hugs goodbye, she would always tell me she would miss me more, and we would argue about who would miss who more. Only when we started the game, Jacque left of the R sound, making our history a little more memorable and maybe a little more endearing. And I know it’s true to this day: I do miss her mo’.

As a Christian, I believe in God’s incredible gift of free will. I know for a fact the God did not take my Jacque from this Earth that her number was not arbitrarily up on some meter. I know in my soul due to my faith that my Lord and Savior is not the puppeteer in the sky, making His commands and will altering our lives. I believe we control our choices; that is part of His gift to us. And somewhere on Katy-Flewellen in front of the Grayson Lakes home development, in Katy, Texas around 6pm on a sunny and clear summer afternoon, on the day of Jacque’s favorite teacher’s birthday, the free will of my daughter collided with the free will of that other unknown, surviving driver. That regardless of the realities: her inexperience at driving or being unable to recover from a tire slipping from the pavement toward the ditch, the side airbag failing to inflate to protect her head, the other driver’s speed and lack of attempts to stop, the idea that she was more focused on her boyfriend following her than the road before her, or the possibility that she may have been on the cell phone, the horrific road conditions that don’t allow for a safe emergency lane or due to the erosion, the lip of the road too steep for most drivers to recover, the atrocious speed limit set by the county for a road often the victim of auto collisions, and the Katy EMS’ inability to save her. That in spite of all those things, God was there, with open arms to hold her and accept her into Heaven. That no matter what she had fallen victim to in this life, it was not God’s will that she die that day, it was His will, however that she not die alone. He was there; I know it more than I know anything else, faith keeps that in my heart.

After that note left in the sand, I returned to the house we were gifted for the week, worn to the core with grief again. The next day, as I wandered the shore alone, I found that I no longer saw shells that were perfect, but started to see pieces of glass among the shells. What started as someone’s bottle or plate or window or other piece of wonder that was now broken, tossed out to sea, and pummeled to a softness indescribably heart wrenching. There I was, my eyes open to an entire different wonder. I began to pick up each piece I saw… walking along with my iPod, singing my Christian rock music with the crashing of the waves, noticing each piece of glass in the water, on the sand, in the piles of shells that had washed ashore. My note to Jacque had obviously been picked up by her as it was gone, not one shell in the heart remained and the note was sent to Heaven with her, taken by the tide.

Over the next year, I held that sea glass in a jar in my kitchen. Much changed for me in that year. The shock wore thin; the reality and finality of the death of my child rattled my nerves. Her smells wore away from the pillows and blankets and toys, her voice was kept on recording but nearly forgotten, and her spirit didn’t seem as close as it was the first year. I kept moving forward: therapy, support groups, talking with friends who had similar losses. I didn’t know why I had collected all that glass, but it was becoming a very valuable part of me in that jar in the kitchen. I was attracted to those broken shards, drawn like an unspeakable need. Friends and family took notice of the collection of glass and started collecting pieces for me. My niece and nephew vacationed on Catalina Island and even mailed me some sea glass found off the coast of California. My mom-in-law collected it for me, too. Even my friends were filling my jar with sea glass. Just like my grief journey, the sojourners were surrounding me with love and support, holding me up when I couldn’t see the path of my life. When I couldn’t see those other pieces of glass, it was my mom, my sister, my family, my friends, who held me up in prayer and in support and brought those additional pieces of glass back to my jar.

When we had our kitchen remodeled, my wonderful designer and friend took some of that glass, creating on canvas a cross made up of all the broken pieces. Since I collect crosses, this was intimately special to me and touched my soul. It was that piece of artistic expression with my sea glass that began another portion of my journey. As the tears spilled out from admiration for the cross, I realized those pieces of glass I am so attached to are like the pieces of my heart: broken, shattered, tossed in the ocean without care, without a greater purpose. My heart had been shattered with the loss of Jacque and truth be told, I am sure that no matter how long I grieve or how healed my heart will eventually be, it will just be like those pieced together puzzles of glass I create. There will always be a hole or a shattering or a place where Jacque’s life filled my heart, but with her absence the spaces are bigger.

How does a mother define a relationship with her child? There are no words that bear the depth of my loss, there are no amounts of sea glass I can collect to put my heart back together. It is and always remains barely there, hanging one, waiting for the next change in life. Creating my new destiny, not waiting at the crossroads of my life, but finding a new purpose, if it is no longer to be Jacque’s Earthly mom, then who am I and what am I doing here?

At the two year mark I reflect on where I have been, what I have grieved and how the journey through the wilderness of grief continues to amaze me. Just when the ocean is calm, another storm brews just on the horizon. My emotions are as volatile as the sea itself, but I am comforted with my walks along the shore, picking up the pieces to my shattered heart, knowing that on another level, another plane, Jacque is with me and we are laughing and talking and showing each other the beauty and magic and splendor in God’s world. As a mother, I am loved and I am blessed, let me never forget that.

Jen Endresen
In memory of my daughter, Jacque Endresen Nov 13, 1988-Jul 17, 2006