It was (not) just a dress

Two decades ago a young girl sat and stitched.

A little dress found form under her fingers, blend of crocheted lace, rich red, and cream.

The girl made many dresses in those days before she was a woman, and many of them she gave away.

This one she kept.

She kept it until she was a woman...

and dreamed of the baby girl who might one day wear it.

Was she was right to keep it?

To keep hoping for a baby girl of her own?

Was it a waste?

What if she never married, never had a child?

She loved that dress.

She loved dreaming of her own daughter even more.

Two decades later...

A whirlwind of pain and joy...

And a daughter came to be.

She grew quickly, but not quickly enough.

Before tiny girl was grown enough to fit the dress...

The dress disappeared in a whirlwind of chaos along with most everything else the woman owned.

Everything but her own life and the lives of her husband and daughter.

It was just a dress.

Why then was was it such a heartbreak to lose just a dress?

Why, when she had the daughter it represented in her arms did the absence of the dress sting so?

The dreams she had held onto… gone.

But not forever.

The daughter had survived after all.

She had survived, but barely.

So the woman let her tears and anger flow out because of a dress.

It wasn’t about the dress.

It was never about the dress.

It was about what the dress represented...

And the loss of the dress provided a way to grieve the very near loss of the daughter.

The daughter she holds in her arms and rocks as an excuse to rock and feel the weight of the fragility of life and the imminence of loss.