Luck of the Irish
A friend texted me a few weeks after my baby passed away asking how I was holding up. I snapped this pic (no makeup, eyes perma-puffed shut from lack of sleep and crying) and sent it to her with the text "idk why but I find wearing this shirt strangly comforting. It cracks me up and I know that's weird, but I love it."
I lived in this shirt for the first month after Kalea died.
This shirt was home. Home while I sat numb on the couch and felt time pass around me. Home while my heart broke and bled and broke and bled as I sobbed into the familiar gray sleeves. Home while I tried to eat food that I had no appetite for-- food that turned to ash in my mouth. I couldn't swallow. Home while I sat dry heaving by the toilet as my mind replayed the trauma of finding the body of my baby girl over and over again. I had no energy. I felt sick. I felt like my brain was burning and honestly, I hoped I was dying.
This shirt was the symbol of a new chapter in my life-- the grief chapter. It was a clumsy grab from the clearance rack at Walmart the first time I felt emotionally *stable* enough to venture out alone after Kalea's death.
I stood there in the check out line with a stack of randomly grabbed clearance clothes because I needed things that were free from the memories of her that were imprinted into every inch of the clothes hiding in my closet. As my mountain of clothes moved down the convenor belt, the elderly cashier remarked "that's a lot of clothes." I was embarrassed. Thanks to covid, dressing rooms were closed and since Walmart was the only store allowed to open, I decide to buy it all instead of make decisions. Decisions were too hard right now. Every decision triggered a headache. Now I was self-conscious and the grief was spilling out of me.
With tears streaming down my face I babbled that my baby had just died a week ago and stood there crying in the check out line. The poor man awkwardly mumbled a "sorry for you loss" and scanned my things quicker. I was in Walmart. Everything was the same-- same aisles, same artificial lighting, same strangers bustling about their busy normal lives and-- I-- I would never have normal again.
I sat in my car and bawled— humiliated that I'd just publicly cried in Walmart (of all places) and feeling completely overwhelmed that nothing was the same. Not eating. Not sleeping. Not thinking. Not even going to Walmart. Life would forever feel and be different now.
But I got this “Luck of the Irish” shirt on that Walmart run. This magic shirt that literally made me feel like the most hilarious person alive when I put it on because WHO like WWHHHOOOO has a child with an awful type of castotrophic epilepsy and then loses their other child? WHO DOES THAT EVEN HAPPEN TO?! Two major tragedies in THE SAME FAMILY in less than two years? Could we spread out the tragedies a little please?? Like there are so many other families out there with 3, 4, 5, 6 (and more!) healthy kids. No accidents, illnesses, or death. Really, we couldnt have given ONE of my tragedies to them?? So not fair God. So not cool.
Some luck, right?
They say you either laugh or cry (and believe me I do plenty of both) but it felt GOOD just to crack myself up over the irony of that shirt!
But you know what else I felt when I donned that shirt?
I felt the blood of my McBride ancestors alive and strong in my veins. The McBride family who moved from Ireland to Scotland and then from Scotland to America after hearing missionaries preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. They came to America to gather with the saints. This little McBride family who said goodbye to parents in Scotland (who said they should drown in the depths of sea for joining such a church and that any letters from America would be burned) still chose to brave the ocean and arrived in Iowa only to join up with the infamous Martin Willie Handcart Company-- the most unfortunate Handcart company to make the journey to Salt Lake.
My great-great-great-grandfather Peter Howard McBride (six years old at the time) walked from Iowa to Utah with his family in starving, freezing winter conditions pulling handcarts across the plains. He and his siblings left bloodly footprints in the snow, lost their father on the crossing, and cared for their sick mother who miracoulsy survived.
So when I wear that shirt and see “Luck of the Irish” staring back at me in the mirror— I know what that means, and I remember the price that was paid. I come from those people and they are by my side pushing and pulling my heavy handcart along with me as I struggle with the load I've been given.
So as Giles Corey in the Crucible says— “More weight.”
I can take it still.
