As usual, we all took off for a trip to be anywhere but home on the anniversary of Alli's death. When we do this, we can more easily take our minds off the significance of that date. We decided to go to a ghost town, appropriate for the purpose. We wanted to revisit Virginia City, Montana, on which my husband wants to write a book, but with gas prices being through the roof, we ended up at a charming, rebuilt pioneer town in Idaho instead. It did not have the right creepy vibe, and there were too many people involved on the tour for my daughter to enjoy it like she wanted to. However, the rest of us were suitably impressed. Some of the houses reminded me of my grandpa's house. The mercantile there especially felt just like a store my grandpa's family ran from almost a century ago until a couple of decades ago.
We did wander through the nearby Lava Hotsprings, a charming tiny tourist town like one my daughter has created as the basis for her stories and plotlines. We enjoyed ice cream and a small-town diner. It was a nice, inexpensive getaway, so we didn't have to ponder who wasn't there, or probably was there that we couldn't see. She would have been 12.
Most of our little trip, I was able to keep it together. I lost it a little bit when my mom called and cried with me. I started to break down a couple of times over the course of the day. But my real breakdown came after we got home, and I trotted out her baby book. I went into more detail than I usually do for my boy, telling him things he'd never heard about Alli and about his relationship with her. It wasn't until we got to the images of the cold, waxen face of my previously vibrant baby and the pictures of the tiny coffin that I collapsed entirely. Instead of awkwardly offering me a drink of water to stop me from crying in his usual panic mode, my teenager showed a lot more emotional maturity when he just held me while I sobbed. My husband rubbed my back until the storm passed. My boy later pointed out we all need these times to break down, to give into the grief. I'm thankful they were there, and I'm thankful to know we will hold our angel again. In the meantime, dates like this still hurt.
