There are beautiful pictures of three precious little girls surrounded by their friends and family on the page "friends who love Matt". They are literally breathtaking. When I am brave enough to go to that page and look, I actually feel my breath taken away. These girls were the embodiment of beauty and innocence. I feel with every picture I look at I get to know them each a little better, but it hurts so much...the pictures. I end up in tears, clutching my heart. I can spare myself this pain by simply not looking at the images. Madonna, Matt, all of their families and friends can't. The pictures are more than just digital images on a support page for them. The pictures are still vividly real in their minds and hearts. The pictures live inside them and while they call to mind happier days, they are also a constant reminder of all that was lost. Someday the pictures will bring more joy than sorrow, but today is not that day.
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When I was six years old we moved from the house I'd lived in since I was born to a new, bigger house a street over. I loved our "new" house which was actually a very large, hundred+ year old farm house with tons of character. Despite being happy with our sprawling back yard and my big bedroom, I never forgot my first house. I never stopped missing it. I always said when I "grew up" I would buy that house back.
Fast forward 20 years. My husband and I had been married three years and we had just purchased a small ranch style house on the outside of town. A "starter house" as it is said. It was a nice early spring day and I found myself driving past that childhood home when I saw a "for sale" sign out front. I literally had to pull over because I was shaking with excitement and a mix of other emotions. I called my husband who indulged my joy and said we could go look at the house. I just wanted to see the inside. I just wanted to look. Ha ha...yeah right. I wish the whole process was as easy as these three words, but either way the end result was the same: we bought it.
I sit in my "new" old house now which we have lived in for five years and I occasionally go through old pictures from when my family used to live here. I'll hold the picture up to the spot in the house where it was taken. The paint may be different, the floor coverings changed, but it certainly is the same spot. I can touch that wall, that window, stand against the backdrop where that photo of my grandmother and a five-year-old me was taken or in front of the window where that photo of my brother and I was taken - just children with our lives before us. I hold this little image on paper in my hands and even though I am looking at the same room, it is so incomprehensibly different. There is a strange incongruity between the reality of this room in that picture and the reality of this room now when I consider the vast ocean of time between the two. Everything is the same, yet everything is also so very different. Grandma passed away almost four years ago. My brother and I are no longer little children. The picture in my hand was taken just 3 feet away from me. I can sit in the same spot but even though things look the same, so much has changed. I can't return to the simplicity of being five years old or laugh with grandma about silly things. Its weird how time has changed so much while leaving so much exactly the same.
That is how I feel when I look at the beautiful pictures of your daughters. They are so real and innocent and happy. I cannot reconcile the images with reality, the fact that time has marched on - events happened as they did - and these photographs so full of life and joy are now sad reminders of all that is gone. Lily, Sarah and Grace are right there. I look at the pictures. I can hear the laughter if I close my eyes. I can feel the joy. Life looks so perfect, like the photo itself could come alive. It is a little snapshot of what was an ordinary day in ordinary lives such a short time ago but seems to be such a far away dream now.
I went to church tonight with my grandmother. I had not been to her church (we belong to different congregations) since Christmas eve. I thought back and recalled the anticipation and joy I had felt last time I was in this church. The recollection brought me to tears. In my mind I can see what I was doing that hour: trying to keep my three small kids moderately calm as we listened in the vestibule (by the time we arrived there was standing room only), feeling the powerful statement as "Santa" solemnly walked through the church and knelt to pray before the baby Jesus, excited for the fun party we would be attending later. I see it all like it was yesterday. I did not know the names Madonna and Matthew Badger then. Nor had I ever seen the innocent beauty of Lily, Sarah and Grace Badger. I had never heard of Lomer and Pauline Johnson. I still believed that tragedies of this magnitude could not happen, especially not on Christmas Eve. Looking out over the half-empty church tonight and thinking back, knowing how events would unfold later on that night, I was struck with an eerie loneliness. Gone was the joy, gone were the warm Christmas decorations, the vestibule - packed full a month ago - stood empty tonight. It was Chrstmas Eve and I had been so excited for the festivities of the next few days, but tonight all I felt was a heavy sadness. I stood this evening where I stood then, but despite all my prayers and wishes I cannot get back to that night. I can stand in the same spot but it is not the same. It was such a short time ago, but so much has changed. I can't find the rewind button. If I could....if only I could.
Time. The slickest criminal ever to exist. She can steal our memories, our beauty, our youth. She flies by when we want her to last, and moves like a snail when we want her to fly. In her deceptiveness she lull's us into forgetting she is so powerful that even just an hour, a minute, a second and she can change our lives forever. With one breath we are wishing her to go faster and in another we beg her to slow down, go back, stop. She can make us feel like we are in the past when in fact it is the present and she mocks us with this vast unknown we call the future. We complain about school, or work, or 3 am feedings, or screaming fights between the kids, or being so busy we can't see straight....now....knowing, though never fully realizing, how much we will wish for this time back....someday.
Time. A friend. She is the ultimate healer of wounds and fixer of mistakes. She possesses the magic potion for fading the bad from memory and leaving only the good up front. If you are patient with her, she will help. She gives us perspective and wisdom. She teaches us lessons no books can. She is comforting when we allow her space to work. She is sometimes the only one who can help.
Time. A wretched mistress. She eventually takes everything from us. She toys with us and tricks us. In the end she runs out on us, leaving us wondering where she went and holding nothing more than our memories. We look at pictures for comfort. They remind us of a happier day. But the bitter irony about pictures is that they also remind us that day has forever passed.
Your pictures are stunning. They are so real. They embody so much love. They fill me with joy and in the next heartbeat they fill me with sadness. I ache for all of the little moments of just being together that have been lost. So many lives changed forever. I look at the pictures despite all the pain it causes me because the pictures bring these little angels to life for me. I may have never crossed paths with Lily, Sarah or Grace Badger in this lifetime - I may never cross paths with any of the Badgers or Johnson's - but I know and love you all now (even if it is through this very tragic window) and will forever.
My sad, sad heart is beats every other beat for you both because the pain you must be feeling is too much for your hearts to carry alone.
