Kittymomma's Adventures

One of my favorite books series is “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” series by Ann Brashares. You wouldn’t think it from the title, but they are beautifully written, emotionally complex books. In the final book, “Sisterhood Everlasting” (SPOILER ALERT), one of the main characters dies. The night they find out one of the other girls, Carmen, thinks about the fact that Tibby has died first and tries to imagine what it must have been like for her, so that she wouldn’t be alone in some way. She feels that it is “horrifically brave of Tibby to be dead” (Brashares 67).

That quote came back to me last week when I was thinking about Lucy. I have spent my whole life frightened of death, especially violent death. When I was little, I was very afraid of losing my mother or of becoming sick and dying before I had a chance to grow up and do everything I wanted to do.

I just can’t believe that, at the age of fifteen months, my little girl has done the very thing I have been so frightened of my whole life. She died. She went into the great Unknown. She lived and she died with no fuss or overthinking or the hang-ups about life and death that we all develop. She probably had no choice in the matter. She probably did not even know when it happened. But she did it. And I am just in awe of her bravery.

She is still teaching me, because I am no longer so afraid of death. If my baby girl was brave enough to move on when it was time, surely I can be, too. Maybe part of it is hoping to see her again one day as well. I’m sure the fear will creep back at least somewhat, but for now, I am going to be brave like my little girl always was.

Brashares, Ann. “Sisterhood Everlasting.” New York: Random House, 2011.

(My MLA is rusty, but I couldn’t leave that citation in the blog post hanging.)