Remembering Jessica

Oh, Jess, my sweet little Zoobie girl, me and mom, your brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins, nephews, soon-to-be-nieces and close friends are so heartbroken over losing you. At times, the grief can be so overwhelming it feels like we will never be able to get past it. Events, people, places, things and memories become triggers that jar us back into the reality that you are no longer here with us, and we will never be able to be with you again in this life. That is the negative reality of things.

At times, that negative reality can feel like it is crushing the life out of all of us. That negative reality can invade every aspect of our lives, the present, the future and even the past. That negative reality wants to dominate the conversation in our heads. Those voices of negative reality come barging into our lives at all hours of the day and night, uninvited, unexpected; they are loud, persistent and demand to be heard. Those voices of negative reality want to hijack and overwrite all of the wonderful realities of your life, and our lives together with you.

Well, you know what, we are NOT going to allow that to happen. We are NOT going to allow the wonderful realities of your short life, and our lives together to be stolen from us, and stolen from you. We are going to intentionally listen to the softer, quieter, more humble voices of the wonderful realities of your life and our lives together.

As painful as it is, that process of taking back the wonderful realities, the wonderful moments, has to begin by acknowledging the tragedy, the grief and the loss. Those things are all too real. Something tragic, unfair and terrible happened, and was happening for so many years. We can’t just ignore it and pretend it isn’t there. If we do, it is going to build and build and eventually explode and blow up our lives.

This is the one year anniversary of your death. It is that. But if we intentionally choose it, and fight for it, this can also become a celebration of your life, and our lives together. It can be BOTH. It can be a time to grieve the past, present and future, but also to celebrate the past AND present, and EVEN the future.

We need to intentionally choose to turn down the volume on the voices of negative reality, and amplify the quiet voices of the wonderful realities, the wonderful moments. Truth-be-told, the wonderful realities and moments, greatly outnumber and outshine the negative realities and moments, as excruciatingly painful as they were. We can honestly say that when we add it all up, your life, and our lives together with you, have been MOSTLY WONDERFUL.

I remember going with mom for her ultrasound when she was pregnant with you, and I remember the technician turning to us and saying, “it’s a girl.” A girl! What a blessing! We are having a girl! Bobby is going to have a little sister! We were so happy. We picked out your name, Jessica Marie Clinkert months before you were born. 

I was working full time and going to grad school at night while mom was pregnant with you. While I was taking notes, I would be doodling your name in my notebook, over and over again. I could not wait for you to be born. Then the big day finally came. I was in the delivery room when you first came into the world. I was able to cut the cord and hold you just moments after you were born. Once we got home, we had a little routine together. I would hold you close and sing a little song to you, “Jessie, Jessie, Jessie, I love you. Yes I do. I love you.” I would whisper it in your little ears over and over again.

Bobby lovingly referred to you as “baby sister” and you two were so cute together. You were the enabler of all of the risky things that Bobby wanted to do. He would whisper something in your ear, and then you would run to us, smiling, saying, “Mom, dad, can WE do this or that somewhat dangerous thing?!?!” You and Bobby were partners in crime together for so many years.

You were all about the equal opportunity for women, even at a young age. You crawled, walked, talked and did everything at such a young age as you were desperately trying to keep up with your older brother. You were the embodiment of “everything boys can do, girls can do better.” 

You were such a bright, bold, cheerful, smiling, laughing, running, playing, mischievous and loving little girl. Mom did home daycare for some of our neighbors to help us make ends meet. You were barely older than the children mom cared for, but you took it upon yourself to be a second mother to them. You were SO SWEET to the children mom cared for on a daily basis. 

Your love for children stayed with you throughout your life. You were so thrilled to have a baby sister, and as you grew up, you LOVED being dressed in the same outfit as she was. Picking outfits to wear was a very important part of your young little life (and really your entire life), and you were “kind enough” to help Courtney and Bobby pick their outfits.

You were sooooo excited when mom was pregnant with Michael that you begged to go to the hospital with us so you could be there when Michael was born. You loved children so much, me and mom agreed that it would be a wonderful memory for you. You were there, in the delivery room, when your baby brother was born, and you were so happy you started sobbing tears of joy when we handed him.

Of course your love of children was able to fully blossom as you got older (I’ll make an allusion here to the future just so I can mention how much you absolutely adored your nephews, and how much they absolutely adored their Aunt Jess. That is one of the losses we grieve the most). We started to take family trips to the Philippines when you were 15 years old to help serve at a local orphanage. On every trip, your soft, compassionate, gigantic heart broke for each one of the children you met. You were able to form an instant bond and connection, and the name “Jessica” really became famous in San Pablo City, Laguna.

In the back of our minds, me and mom were thinking ahead, to you growing older, falling in love, getting married, and having children of your own. You had such an abundance of love for children and family, we knew you would have been the most amazing wife and mother. 

That reminds me of a phrase I used to use to describe some of our experiences together as a family, and a larger unit of extended family and friends. I called these “concentrated life experiences.” During these experiences, like our trips to the Philippines, it felt like we experienced decades of life, all concentrated into a relative short experience. In these experiences we would have joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, catastrophe, success and failure, all at the same time.

The more I think about it, your whole life was like a concentrated life experience. You lived your whole life so large and with such intense passion, beginning at such a young age. While it breaks my heart that you never got to experience having your own children and raising a family, I cannot help but think that you had already experienced a lifetime’s worth of loving on children in the short time that you lived on this earth, especially your little sister, your little brother, your nephews, and the children you hung out with in San Pablo City, Laguna.  

Maybe your short life was really full, because it was so concentrated by your intense passion for life and loving others. Maybe you experienced a lifetime’s worth of love, friendship, awe, wonder and connection in your 27 years on this earth. Maybe we can let go of some of the feelings of regret, because of how passionately you lived every moment of the life you had. 

When the intensity and passion that characterized your life was under control, you burned like a warm, cozy, crackling fire in a beautiful fireplace. Inviting everyone to get close, cuddle, have intimate conversations, live, laugh and love together, as a whole. You were an epicenter of what we came to call Communitas. It was your intense passion, under control, that drew people in, to gather around you like they would gather around a fireplace, or a glowing campfire in the woods.

You created the environment and experience of Communitas – being welcomed, loved well, and accepted as an equal. That was the blessing of your intensity, passion, and concentrated life experiences.

When the bipolar disorder caused your intensity and passion to spiral out of control, you burned like a raging forest fire that wreaked havoc and destruction on you and those closest to you. 

We have bipolar disorder in our family. I have heard stories told of the damage done by that disease to those who came before us. I have seen that physiological disorder manifest itself in other family members, ultimately ending their lives as well. I can feel that neurochemical defect inside of me. For some reason, my defect is smaller than yours was. Mine is small enough that I can contain it and control it. 

Unfortunately, sometimes the neurochemical defect is larger and more productive in some people than in others. Tragically, you ended up receiving a very large defect, along with many other things that were wonderful. 

You leveraged your wonderful gifts of intensity and passion into a joyful, zest for living and loving others that was so expressive, so concentrated, that it could not be contained. That really made you stand out in a very unique, and wonderful way. 

You lived and loved so large, so intensely, and so passionately, that maybe, the truth is, you really lived and loved 200 years worth of life in the all-too-short 27 years you actually had.

That reminds me of something two good friends of mine shared with me recently about dealing with loss and grief. It was written by “Judy51” in the following post. The post compares and contrasts two views of dealing with grief. The first view is a very common, but incorrect view of dealing with grief. The second view is a much more robust and real view of dealing with grief, that can be engaged by choice, if one desires to do so. 

The common, but incorrect view or false narrative of dealing with grief, can be illustrated with a jar and a rock. The jar is your life. The rock is your grief. The false narrative says, on day one, the rock is huge and takes up a big chunk of the space in the jar. A while later, the big rock is replaced with a medium sized rock. The false narrative on grief says the grief actually shrinks as time goes on, taking up less space in the “jar” of your life. Then finally, the medium sized rock is replaced with a very small rock and your grief shrinks and almost completely disappears over time.

I used to believe that the false narrative of dealing with grief was true, until I experienced the very intense grief of losing you. I know now, first-hand, that my grief will never shrink – it will always remain the same size.

However, the robust view of dealing with grief has revolutionized my thinking, not only about grief, but about your disease as well.

The robust view of dealing with grief begins with a similar illustration as the false narrative. The first jar, representing your life, is the same size, and the big rock placed in the jar, representing your grief, is the same size. As time goes on however, the rock, representing the grief, always stays the same size. It remains as big as it was on day one, all throughout the process. This has certainly been consistent my personal experience. The grief and the intensity of it has never really changed. I don’t think it ever will.

What can change, if we intentionally choose to change it, is the SIZE OF THE JAR. In other words, we can intentionally choose to GROW the size of our lives. The bigger, and larger we allow our lives to grow, the less space the big rock of grief occupies in our lives. 

If we live large by choosing to love large – loving BOTH ourselves AND others large – that growth in the “size” of our lives can change the amount of space the grief occupies. I absolutely LOVE that analogy. What a great analogy. What a great vision and mission for living beyond a traumatic loss.

Jessica, looking back at it, I can see a similar pattern at work in your life with your mental illness. The big rock taking up space in your life was your bipolar disorder. The bigger that rock became, the bigger you grew the jar of your life and love, as kind of a natural pushback against your illness. You were able to keep ahead of the growing rock of your bipolar disorder when you were younger by continually growing your life. and your love.

As you became a young adult, the bipolar disorder just kept growing out of control and it began to fill the jar of your life faster than you could grow it. The bipolar rock eventually just overwhelmed you and broke the jar of your life here on earth.

In spite of this tragedy, you left us with such a wonderful example of how to fight to grow the jars of our lives bigger. How to live bigger, and love bigger. How to live and love with a passion and intensity that is always growing and expanding.

Fortunately for us, the grief will always be the same size rock. It is a big rock for sure, but it can’t get any bigger. We have already experienced the maximum loss. 

If we are willing to follow your lead, and continue to grow our lives, the grief will take up less space, and be more difficult to see. The bigger life and love will outshine, overwhelm and overcome our big rocks of grief.

Jess, thank you for fighting so hard for so long. Thank you that you never stopped loving and you kept growing your love. Thank you for being such a wonderful role model of channeling intensity and passion to create Communitas, to welcome people as equals, to love them well, and love them big. 

Today, we acknowledge the tragic loss, and how big it really is. But we will NOT stop there. We will ALSO remember, share and enjoy all of the MOSTLY WONDERFUL moments we had together as a family and extended family and friends. We will remember how you taught us to battle the difficulties of life by living and loving with relentless passion and intensity – growing our lives and our love bigger every day. 

We miss you Jessica, but we love you SO MUCH MORE than we miss you. We will see you again. That will be an amazing, incredible reunion honey. Until then. Love you so much <3