Episode 12: The Midnight Library

I was in Mt Vernon with my friend Katie, weeks after Nora passed away. We were in town to get a few things for dinner at the local Coop and decided to poke around a few shops nearby. I was in a phase of grief then where I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. I was unhinged, floating - things felt raw, new, unprocessed. I knew I had a daughter, and I knew that she was gone. I knew her name was Nora. I knew that she had been taken from us, and I knew I definitely did not understand why. I had no idea what the days ahead were going to look like or how we were going to get through. I remember the sun was shining though, and it felt nice to be somewhere different - a small, quiet town with that small town charm.

We moseyed into one of the shops along main street, the type that has a little bit of everything - candles, socks, clothing, books, art. I was picking things up at random, with no real rhyme or reason and I found myself turning over a book to read the inscription on the back. It started with “We all have regrets — choices we could have made differently, other lives we might’ve led…Nora’s life has been going from bad to worse.” I paused, struck by seeing her name on the back of this random book in this random store in this somewhat random town I’d found myself in on this particular day.

A fellow bereaved mother shared with me that one of the things she found solace in after losing her daughter at birth was buying things with her daughter’s name. She’d sent us a little care package of Nora things and I’d taken a liking to the way it felt acquiring them - in whatever form they took.

In this particular moment, I knew I had to buy this book. I didn’t read much more of the back but carried it with me and purchased it moments later.

Since that day, the book has sat on my bedside table. Waiting, I suppose. Days, weeks, and now months passed since that day in Mt Vernon. Until just a few days ago when I was feeling particularly stumped in my grief. And for no particular reason, I picked up the book and began to read.

In this story titled “The Midnight Library”, the protagonist, a 35-year-old woman named Nora, is struggling - deeply. She finds herself in a place called the midnight library, filled with infinite books possessing the lives she might have lived had she made different choices. The book contemplates regret, what ifs, pain, fear, despair, depression, longing, wonder, and the purpose of life. Of being alive. I found myself emersed in Nora’s story. Turning page after page - as her story unfolded - as she was confronted with the endless possibilities of what could have been - curious how her story was going to end.

As I read the final pages, as I closed the book and set it down - I sat there. A sweetly eerie feeling settling in as I thought back to that day in Mt Vernon when I picked up that book, saw it was a story about a girl named Nora and immediately knew I was going to purchase it.

Life is funny in this way. In the same way that I’ve come to believe that there really is no rhyme or reason for why things happen the way that they do, I sat there feeling like I was supposed to read this book, in this moment, at this particular time in life. And that in some surreal and curious way, it felt like a message from my daughter - a story that she wanted me to read - a message from her to me.

She says:

The sky grows dark

The black over blue

Yet the stars still dare

To shine for you

She says:

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

“We can’t tell if those versions would have been better or worse.”

“Life begins on the other side of despair.”

And, “You don’t have to understand life; you just have to live it.”

I will never understand so many things about life - the biggest mystery yet is why Nora died. Why she did not get the gift of a life here on earth and why we did not get the gift of her here with us physically. And yet, we keep on living.

In this life, in the days ahead, in all the unknowns, and all that we will face, I will continue to look for the messages she leaves for us. The ways in which she shows us her light. The ways that we feel her presence and the ways she shows up in our dreams as we imagine her and who she would have become.

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” And I see her everywhere. The many gifts she continues to sprinkle in our world. And wow am I grateful for them.