Page 35 - 2016 Spring-Summer Issue

some of the rage and helplessness that was warring inside my eyes, and the last thing I think of when I close them at

me. Sundays were the day that Paisley and her parents came night. Sometimes I imagine I can hear her tiny footsteps in

over for dinner, and instead I couldn’t close my eyes without my hallway, or that I can feel her small body pressed into

seeing her in the pretty white and pink casket, curled up in mine as we snuggle on the couch. There are days that I am

her mother’s arms. able to block away most of the pain, and enjoy my day…

After the rage died down for the moment, though it still laughing, and smiling, and making new memories. But the

returns even a year later, the bafflement set in. How could pain is always there, like a broken rib that nobody can see,

this be happening? People but that I can feel with every

aren’t supposed to bury their breath.
grandchildren. Not when
I wanted to break something, to If there is a better or an easier,
hurt somebody, to do anything I haven’t found it yet. I have
they’re 16 months old and

absolutely perfect. Not when to funnel off some of the rage and just found this new life I am
they are so small and sweet forced to live in, one where my

and pure. Not ever. It was helplessness that was warring granddaughter is nothing but a
so ridiculous I could almost inside me. treasured memory that I carry
laugh sometimes. It was like with me everywhere. I once

a bad movie that I couldn’t read the phrase ‘it broke my

get out of. My granddaughter heart into more pieces than

was gone, and I had never once contemplated living in this it was made of.’ I think that sums up the pain better than

world without her. anything else I have read. It crushed my heart into splinters,

People tell you that it gets better, that one day you’ll be and even now that I’ve tried to pick up the pieces and put
happy again. In a way they’re right, but at the same time them back together, it is no longer what it was before. My
they are so very wrong. It isn’t better, or easier one year life was forever altered on the day Paisley died, twisted into
down the road. It has just become my new reality that I’ve something I would have never imagined, into something I
been forced to accept. I still live my life. I still work, and don’t like, but have to live.

read, and cook, and go to church, and spend time with There are some wounds that people carry on their souls

family. But the pain of not having Paisley is a shadow on that are too deep and raw to ever fully heal. The loss of a

even the brightest of days. And there are harsh reminders grandchild is one of them. Those of us who are unlucky

everywhere. Fall means the first day of school that she will enough to be in this club understand that. There is no

never have, and Halloween costumes she will never wear. A judgment over angry words or days where you can barely

little girl with long hair in a braid is an image she will never function. There is no condemnation of ‘You should be

be. I will never get to take her for pedicures and lunches getting over it by now’ or ‘You really need to move on.’ We

like I had planned, or spend too much money on her at are allies in this same war, and know there is no getting over

Christmas. I won’t ever go to Grandparent’s Day at school it, or moving on.

and have breakfast with her, or pin her artwork to my fridge There is just us, and our new normal.
with a magnet. When a child dies, you don’t just lose the

child. You lose the first wiggly tooth, and the first scored Jessi’s 16-month-old granddaughter, Paisley Arianna Winkler, was killed
goal, and the proud graduate. You lose a piece of your in a horrible car accident, along with her mother, on September 12, 2014.
family, and a piece of your heart. Jessi was a member of the Vidalia, Georgia Chapter, and finds great

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of Paisley. comfort and strength in the online TCF community. She has two surviving
Sometimes she is the first thing I think of when I open grandchildren, Preston and Bre, who help her smile even on the bad days.
Paisley is never far from her thoughts.

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