Candle on the Water

I'll be your candle on the water
'Till every wave is warm and bright
My soul is there beside you
Let this candle guide you
Soon you'll see a golden stream of light

--“Candle on the Water,” Helen Reddy

Dear Thi, 

October is “Infant Loss Awareness” month, and so I think of you. Nine months have passed, enough time to make a whole new you. Mommy and Daddy celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary. On that evening of August 25^th, there was a local lantern festival that we didn’t get to attend, but a thoughtful friend had gone and sent a lantern onto the water in commemoration of beloved lost babies like you. 

Lake Almaden came aglow with waxy paper lanterns drifting gently beneath the light of the moon.

I think of you drifting like that lantern to a place where I cannot reel you in but only hope that you will still keep my flame of love burning strongly inside you to guide you. 

The next day, we brought flowers to your grave. Your headstone had been engraved and now has your name and birthday on it. Now you can rest here with some permanency instead of having a laminated piece of paper to mark your place. 

Daddy chose the design for our family headstone: a protective tree standing tall, lending shade and comfort, surrounded by a rustic wooden fence that hearkens back to peaceful evenings spent viewing the sunset, bidding goodbye to a moment in time that we will never experience again. In the skies, I added three birds in flight. The little one flying high ahead is you, dear Thi, with two bigger birds following after.

We found out the baby we lost after you would have been a boy, a little brother for you. After I felt well from the surgery, I took to jogging along the San Tomas Aquino Trail close to my workplace. 

I am not a runner by any means; I am slow and tire easily with redundant exercise and get bored without mental stimulus to keep me going. Aikido is done in bursts with rest in between; my mind was always busy figuring out a technique and how to best execute it. But running is endurance, stamina, sheer willpower to lap up the endless trail ahead of me and put more and more distance behind me. My mind shuts down from the monotonous scenery of dry grass and sludgy creek water choked with algae. 

 Only the occasional flock of mallards or a lone white egret offer something new to look at. But there is something satisfying in it, too, a sense of accomplishment after logging my miles, the push to self-improve, the burn in my lungs and legs as this addicting corporeal pain takes over and pushes aside the cutting emotional hurt of the past months. Sweat trickles down my temples, and my shoulders burn from the summer sun, so uncultivated from indoor exercise before now. I gasp to suck in air after a 5k, feel blood throbbing in my ears, will my jelly legs to carry me back to the company. Funny thing about running—you have to factor in the journey back equidistant to the miles you have already pushed yourself to go. I explore the trail to niches that I have not been to before. I hone my stamina and energy as I chase my shadow across endless miles of concrete. I remind myself what it’s like to strive to be strong when you feel weak. It is a long road ahead, my girl.