In your honor/the REALest place.

In your honor, I’ll drive with the windows down and blare my (sometimes questionable) taste in music and sing it at the top of my lungs. I will take my coffee exactly the way I like it, even if it’s “too much cream”. (Because it totally is too much. I basically like coffee-flavored cream over ice, not actual coffee, it would seem.)

In your honor, I’ll do at least one thing that scares me, every year. And I’m not talking about being just a little afraid of something. I’m talking about body-shaking, am-I-really-going-to-do-this scared, the feel-alive scared. Maybe I’ll even buy that plane ticket to Cartagena one day and shock myself.

In your honor, I’ll try to live like you did...you just went for things. You weren’t afraid of trying the new, and if you were you did new things, anyway. I don’t know how you did that and made it look so easy. I’d like to learn.

In your honor, I’ll buy the too-high wedge sandals and wear them when I feel like it. I’ll color my hair. I’ll cut it short. Maybe I’ll leave it long. I’ll wear all the makeup one day, then the next I’ll wear no makeup at all. 

In your honor, sweet girl, if I ever get the chance - I will savor every moment of being pregnant and carrying my children. You didn’t get to carry yours; and I know you wanted to. I promise that if I ever get the chance, I swear I will hold it sacred for both of us.

In your honor, I’ll squeeze your siblings a little tighter for you when I see them.

In your honor, I still tell people (and will continue to tell people) that I have a cousin named Meagan. Because I do. Just because you’re gone from this life doesn’t mean you cease to be real. [Just as it says in The Velveteen Rabbit - "Once you become real, you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."] Always.

In your honor, I’ll visit you every time I go to the house we played in as children. Your house in New Hampshire. My dear cousin, one of my first-ever friends - I’ll leave a kiss on your name etched in stone and I'll remember you at your happiest. The blissful childhood ignorance and sheer happy that we shared, that we made all by ourselves in our little corner of the world when we were girls. 

I’ll remember how we went ice-skating and apple-picking, the afternoons playing in the run-down little camper beside Grammie's kitchen window. The chilly November days we spent decorating that scruffy pine tree by the clothesline. I'll remember in summer how we built teepees in the woods until the sun was setting and the sky was turning from blue to gold; how every day with you was an emotional, hilarious, dramatic, beautiful adventure. We never wanted those days to end.

I'll remember catching frogs in Grammie's Tupperware cups and then fibbing about what we used them for so we wouldn't get in trouble; the home movies we made using our moms' camcorders. And, oh all the babies and holidays and birthdays we celebrated in that little house on the hill. I'll remember how you were in love with Tom Hanks and you wanted to be an astronaut the year Apollo 13 came out, how we gushed over Leonardo DiCaprio when he was all the rage, how we snuck around and watched Titanic behind our parents' backs.

The movie nights. The popcorn and ice cream and Skittles in your family's playroom while we watched Star Wars on piles of sleeping bags & pillows. The feigned exasperation we shared over all of our little brothers & sisters; even though we all knew FULL WELL that we never would've changed a damn thing. Our family was our life.

I'll remember the day we all buried BP, how you did your best to bring beauty to a terrible situation. You grabbed my hands and Cait's hands and implored, "Come on, let's pick flowers to put on BP's grave." And we did.

And in June of this year, Meg, I put flowers on yours - pink Gerbera daisies, an entire year after you went Home - and it still didn't feel real. 

REAL. 

But now you are in a place that is so much more REAL, love - more Real than anything we had or have here. The beauty we live and experience on this earth is just a breath, a tasting of the glory and the reality you live in now, Meg. You're in the place where tears of pain can't fall, where hearts can't break anymore, where disease can't destroy. Eternity. THE REALEST PLACE.

[There are tears in heaven, though. The joyful ones, there must be; because one of my favorite feelings in the world is the feeling of running to someone long-missed and treasured. I will most surely be crying when I see you again, Meagan. But until then?]

In your honor, I’ll keep your memory alive by loving you. Always.

xo
Ecka