6/14/1999
Monday
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In Memory of Courtney
Nine years ago this month my niece Courtney died of brain cancer. She was not even two years old.
Courtney's brain tumor was discovered the previous June. For nearly a year my sister and her family endured numerous tests and operations, rejoiced in small victories, and bravely faced their youngest daughter's inexorable decline.
I was living down here in New Jersey when Courtney was born in September 1988, so she was never as well known to me as my older nieces and nephew, yet I can see her so clearly in my mind. Courtney, with her fathomless brown eyes, so appealingly exotic in our blue-eyed/green-eyed family. Courtney in a pretty little hat at my wedding. Courtney in my sister's arms during one of her many hospitalizations. Courtney in a family portrait with her mother, father, sister, and brother on what would be the last day of her too-short life.
I wanted to write more about Courtney, about the meaning of her brief life and her death. But I look at my own children and the words don't come. They get stuck in my throat; they can't make it down my arms to my fingers as I type this.
The truth is, I cannot really understand what it must be like to lose a child. I hope I never will.
Instead, I'll end by quoting something my sister Lori wrote recently:
Another sign that we are ahead of ourselves this spring is that the lupine are blooming. Generally, lupine are most noticeable at the very end of this month. In the past week, however, I have already seen a great deal of it. I never knew what lupine were until moving to Maine, but have since grown to love them. They grow freely and with reckless abandon along Maine fields, hills, and roadsides. The lupine colors are vast and quite beautiful - shades of pale pink, yellow, purple, blue and white abound. The flower itself is tall and full, looking somewhat like foxglove from a distance, although the individual petals are round and very differently formed. The lupine leaves are quite unique and remind me of old fashioned hand-held fans.
I recall that, ten years ago, at the very end of June when Courtney first became ill, I noticed while driving to the Bangor hospital that the lupine were at their peak. I remember thinking that they were stunningly beautiful, and then decrying my ability to notice or even care about such a thing when my daughter was so gravely ill. A year later, just a week or so after she'd died, I'd noticed that the lupine were blooming again. I remember thinking about how we'd come full circle and I wondered if Courtney could see them too, from wherever she was. Since that time, I have been keenly conscious of the lupine's arrival. They herald me and draw me back to a profoundly sad yet glorious time, all the while reminding me of the daughter I was blessed to have, but now must live my life without.
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