Eleanor Vincent's posterous

Eleanor Vincent's posterous

Eleanor Vincent  //  Writer, editor, writing consultant, workshop leader. Author of Swimming with Maya: A mother's story (Capital Books, 2004). Lives and writes in Oakland, California.

Jan 19 / 5:05am

The eyes of Christina Taylor Green

Last year in this country more than 6,500 grieving families said yes to organ donation. For 2011 we know many thousands more will give the gift of life. Among them: the family of Christina Taylor Green, the youngest person to lose her life in the Tuscon shootings. Only nine when she was killed, Christina came to see her congresswoman Rep. Gabrielle Giffords because she wanted to learn more about how government works. As President Obama said in his eulogy for the victims, Christina saw the world with the innocence and hope of a child. Thanks to Christina's parents' decision to donate, two other children have had their sight restored. John Green, Christina's father, says the knowledge that Christina's corneas were able to help other children in need has been a great comfort to the family. Donation is a powerful act of generosity that affects donor families as profoundly as the recipients of their gifts. When the unimaginable happens - a child dies - families who are able to donate can find a powerful sense of meaning even in the most senseless or tragic death. Knowing that something positive has come from your loss changes the course of grief. That's been my experience in the wake of my daughter Maya's death almost 19 years ago. In our case, because she was in an irreversible coma and declared brain dead, Maya was able to donate solid organs as well as tissue (including her corneas) and bone. Ultimately, our gift saved the lives of four people, restored sight for two, and may have helped upwards of 50 people with bone and tissue grafts. Maya lives in our memories. She also continues her physical existence through the many people helped by our gift. I have been fortunate to meet two of those people - the man who received Maya's heart, Fernando, and the woman who received her liver, Patti. Over the years, knowing Patti and Fernando has brought comfort, inspiration, and a very special bond of friendship. Both of these extraordinary people had young families at the time of their transplants in 1992. In my darkest hours, knowing that those children could still grow up with their parents soothed my heart. A few years after Maya died, I imagined what it might be like for the two people who had received her corneas to be looking at the world through her eyes. Learning about Christina's gift of sight brought back the feelings that inspired that poem. Here it is. New Eyes 1. The red squirrel darts across a pine branch, pauses, flicks its tail this way, then that. The December day is clear and fine. I describe this to you, although I don’t know if squirrels or weather interest you. Why tell you about your sister or Christmas, the clothes I still keep under my bed? As if speech could stitch the living to the dead. We are here, you see.  Our eyes still wander over the everyday, gulping it down. 2. I imagine the gloved hands of a surgeon, a touch delicate as snow; Stainless steel carving sight out of you grafting it to new eyes. When she came to did her eyes leap to catch the world as it ran at her? Or, looking in a borrowed window, do strangers fall into the dark of you? 3. The Hebrew word for heaven means “another place.” Daughter, I think of you in alternate space, a membrane so thin I could reach across our worlds running side by side, invisible tracks, a delicious passing or the squirrel’s flick of tail, first on your side, then on mine.
Oct 23 / 5:40am

When children die

In the last 24 hours I have learned of two families who recently lost young children - their tragedies came at me out of the blue.  I find myself wishing I could sit with the parents and listen to their stories. Since my 19-year-old daughter died suddenly in 1992, I've learned many things. One is how sorrow can hollow you out and make space for a new life, one you might never choose for yourself, but one where you miraculously reweave what was torn apart. The other is that telling our stories is a profoundly healing act. And these two things are inextricably linked. It was through telling my story over and over - writing it down and rewriting it again and again - that I learned to live with Maya's death. When your child dies, the world ends. It literally stops. You don't believe you can ever be part of ordinary life again. And for a while you can't. I was as close to insane as I ever want to be for the first two years after Maya died. I sat in therapy sessions and grief support groups and Compassionate Friends meetings wondering how I would be able to draw another breath, let alone heal and move on with my life. The sight of a blond head moving through a crowd made me search frantically for my missing child. For years. I simply could not believe she was gone forever. I tried to imagine how I could live the rest of my life without Maya, and back then I couldn't see a way forward. Now I've lived through the grief and told the story and I know it is possible to survive. I wrote my way to recovery, making the unreal real. When I hear of a mother or father who has lost a child I want to sit down next to them in a quiet place. I want to extend comfort and hope even when there is none, even when each moment seems so fathomless, and the loss a bottomless pit you can never climb out of. Every bereaved parent travels this road in his or her own way. At our support group meetings we used to say that there is a word for a child who loses its parents - an orphan. But there is no word for a parent who loses a child. In our culture, we don't like to imagine what the death of a child feels like because it triggers all of our worst fears. I understand why we shy away from such a profound loss and yet I wish that grieving parents found more support in their daily lives. Swimming with Maya is my attempt to extend that support. I can't sit side by side with every grieving parent who may read my book, but I hope somehow that it brings comfort, and shows how it is possible to survive and ultimately live a new kind of life. I've also learned much from parents who have never lost a child and yet who choose to read the book. They say it's taught them to treasure the ordinary moments with their children, and to be more present even in difficult times. This makes me deeply happy. The children in my life now - my granddaughter Lucia, my neighbors Lily, Edim, and Logan, my great nieces and nephews, the children of my colleagues, even children in supermarkets and on airplanes whom I will never know - remind me that life goes on. There are always children to love in this world, spunky, unpredictable, lively little characters. Whether they are ours or not, we can honor their lives and the struggles and joys of their parents through the stories we listen to and the stories we tell.
Filed under  //  bereaved parents   death of a child   grief   love   mothers   recovery