Kelly Cervantes

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Last night

This past August we spent a week at my parent’s house. We went to the pool, the beach, Medieval Times, played mini-golf, went on walks, and fed turtles. It was an action-packed week. But it was some of the quiet in-between moments that impacted me the most (as they often do).

On a shelf in my parent’s living room sits a digital picture frame that I gave to my mom a couple of Christmases ago. Anessa was absolutely mesmerized by it. The photos rotated through in no particular order, chronological or otherwise, pausing on each for several seconds before transitioning to the next, as if we were turning the page in a very disorganized family photo album. Anessa would loudly announce to anyone within earshot whose picture was now being displayed with extra enthusiasm added when it was a picture of herself.

“Mommy! It’s you and Daddy! You look fancy.”

“Aw, it’s baby Adelaide! She’s so cute.”

“Mommy! Come look! It’s me! It’s me!”

Next week, October 12th, will mark four years since Adelaide died. Five days after that is her birthday. This weekend, five days before October 12th, we will cross the threshold I have been dreading since she passed: we will now have been without her longer than we were with her. I have been trying to make sense of this inconceivable passage of time and the reality that I have been missing her longer than I was given to hold her. How does that make sense? And what even is time?

I’ve been trying to come to terms, or at least find peace with this truth for the last few months. It hasn’t gone well. Ready or not, the threshold will be crossed and there’s nothing I can do about it. Which is part of what bothers me so much about it. It’s a very helpless feeling knowing that time is trudging on and that the chasm between her life and the present will continue to grow… forever.

I tried to figure out why this bothers me so much and realized that with more time after her than with her, it feels like the importance of her life is diminishing. Rationally, I know that it does no such thing. But emotionally, if so much time can go by, so much more life can be lived, it forces a perspective I would rather not see. One where she is merely a fraction of my life, an inch on my timeline, and that can never match up with her impact that will continue to reverberate through me for the rest of my days.

“Mommy, can we go to the pool?” Anessa asked me recently.

“Ness, it’s a little chilly outside, also the pool is closed. It’s fall now.”

“Ok, can we go to the pool tomorrow?”

“Yes, we can go tomorrow.”

In Anessa’s four-year-old brain, anything happening in the future is happening tomorrow. Anything in the past was last night. So, she had her birthday party (in February) last night and we are going trick-or-treating tomorrow. There is something so freeing about viewing time as simply the past, present, and future. Obviously, navigating complicated family and work schedules, deadlines, and holidays cannot be broken down this way on a regular basis. But maybe there is something here I can work with. After all, it is up to me how much power I allow time to yield over me and the way I use it to process the world around me.

Which got me thinking back to that digital photo frame set to random. Everything contained in those thousands of pixels happened, as Anessa would say, ‘last night’. In that frame, time, and the memories made within, are tangled together like limbs cuddling under a blanket. In that frame, Adelaide and Anessa are intermingled, almost co-existing in a shared past tense.

There is no before or after. There is just ‘then’, just ‘last night’.

Knowing that I will soon have forged a longer future without Adelaide than I did with her still sucks. I hate that this is a fact and that I can do nothing to change it. But I can find comfort in that digital picture frame, where time is not constricted to the chronological order of my life. Where a memory’s distance from my present bears no perceived value on its importance.

Adelaide may only have shared life with us for three years and 360 days but those were some of the fullest, most vibrant days of my life. My life continues, and I am so grateful that it does. And I hope there are many more full and vibrant days to come. But just as assured as time moves on is that nothing can diminish love experienced, expressed, and embraced. Our time together may have been limited but that does not affect its value or importance.

Especially when it was only last night that Adelaide squeezed my finger for the last time, and Anessa asked to hold my hand for the first time, and Miguel asked me to marry him, and Jackson asked me to tuck him in. In a tangled last night, we are all together, and in an undefined tomorrow, we will be again.

ID: Kelly in a pink button shirt with blue stripes is leaning her head on Adelaide’s who is not wearing a shirt but instead wrapped in a blanket and leaning into Kelly. Adelaide is wearing a nasal cannula and her eyes are barely open and peeking at the camera.