Grieving over Libby
A few months after Libby died, I sat for an interview with a local newspaper to talk about her death, her impact on the people she knew, and the charity her father and I created in her honor. If you’ll allow a mom to gush about her kid for a moment, Libby was no ordinary ten-year-old. Not only was she beautiful, with a smile that radiated her joyful personality, but she was intelligent, talented, and most of all, kind. She was the once-in-a-lifetime student that teachers raved about, who befriended the other children sitting alone
at lunch and helped the ones struggling with their assignments.
Libby was also a competitive dancer, with a grace and beauty that belied her young years. She could bend her body in the weirdest positions, like her bones were pliable, and she loved to make people gasp with her contortionist-like moves. Dancing was Libby’s true passion. She spent hours upon hours at her dance studio, and then came home and created dances on her own, which I dutifully recorded on my phone.
A few days after Libby died, our community gathered at her elementary school and dance studio to create chalk drawings in her honor. I was too overwhelmed to go as it was happening, but I snuck over after everyone had gone home to take a peek. Among the hundreds of heart-wrenching messages and pictures, I kept noticing these words: Live Like Libby.
Memorializing our Daughter
The phrase rocked me to my core, because it perfectly summed up my daughter’s legacy. In the short time Libby lived, she lived with passion, kindness, dedication, humor, positivity, and joy. She loved and cared about people deeper than anyone I have ever known.
Within a month of her passing, my ex-husband David (Libby’s father) and I created LiveLikeLibby.org, a non-profit organization that provides dance scholarships to students in financial need to help pay for classes, costumes, competitions, and other dance-related costs. It seemed like the perfect way to honor our sweet girl.
OK, now that you know how amazing my daughter was, let’s head back to the newspaper interview. The whole thing took a little over an hour, during which I told countless stories about Libby, and sang her praises with a pride only a mother can feel. I laughed as her dad and I joked about silly things she did when she was a toddler and smiled broadly when sharing her many kindnesses to others. The reporter commented several times about how my face lit up when talking about my daughter.
The Difference Between Functioning and Grieving
To anyone watching, I would’ve seemed normal. Happy, even. Clearly handling my grief well.
What they would NOT have seen is that after I thanked the reporter and politely escorted her out the door, it took about thirty seconds for me to completely break down. I didn’t even make it back to sitting on the couch. I just heaved and sobbed hysterically, leaning on the back of it so I didn’t fall over. During the interview, I had worn my invisible mask—the one that says, “I’m fine. I’ve got this” in front of the rest of the world. After it, I plunged back into the reality that the amazing girl I had just spent an hour talking about—my daughter—was dead.
Sometimes, that reality still feels almost impossible to bear.
This is the actuality of functioning within grief. Functioning and grieving are not one and the same.
Read more by Brooke Carlock at Grieving Mommy: One Mama’s Journey Through Child Loss/Grieving Mommy: a grieving mom’s journey through child loss
Check out Brooke’s other writing on Open to Hope: ‘You’re SO Strong’: A Misunderstanding of Grief – Open to Hope
