I have a final paper that I am working on, due TODAY, for my grief therapy class. So what better time to make a blog post, right?

We can call it procrastinating. We can call it a study break. We can call it thriving under pressure.

In discussing “signs” in my paper, or as Jung would call them, “synchronicities,” I found this piece that I wrote a year and a half ago. In addition to sharing some of it in my paper, I wanted to share it here.

From my writing dated 11/9/15.

Shooting Stars

Shooting stars are one of my “symbols” for Kade; perhaps my most prominent one up to this point. I know exactly the moment that it started.

Kade’s dad, Jon, was saying a few words at the memorial service he had for Kade in Buena Vista a week after the funeral in Highlands Ranch. His brother, David, a pastor, did most of the speaking but Jon wrapped it up. He said, “The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.” I’ve since looked up that quote several times and it is attributed to Lao Tzu, considered to be the founder of Taoism.

It is so incredibly fitting for Kade. He lived this bright, vibrant life. He was loud. And bold. And adventurous. And did I mention loud? Nineteen years is a laughable age for a life as bright as Kade’s to be extinguished. It’s over? Already? It just started in so many ways! Are you f-ing kidding me? He was just beginning!

(breeeeathing)

The quote Kade’s dad stated reminded me of the image of a shooting star. Everyone loves seeing shooting stars. They add excitement to your night. They’re special. You don’t see something like that every day. You look for them. You seek them out. The shooting stars in my life, as I rumble through the memory box of my mind, have been when I’ve been camping, or up in the mountains away from a town, or upper Michigan near my parents’ cabin on a lake. When the sky is extra dark on a summer night you just have to look up. And with a little stillness and patience, you’re treated to a celestial show. Shooting stars. Satellites. The Milky Way. Even the international space station one remarkably-timed night, in a remarkably lucky clearing in the trees.

Kade’s life is like a shooting star (I still have a hard time writing was). So brilliant, exciting, amazing. Hot, fiery, dangerous. Sometimes shooting stars look like they land in your back yard, when in fact they’re hundreds or thousands of miles away, and most don’t land at all, they disintegrate first.

Here’s probably my most significant shooting star story before Kade died. My cousins and I were out ice skating at my grandparents’ pond. I know this because I remember the heaviness, and cold metal blades against my coat, of the skates hanging around my neck. We were on the steps to go inside. My cousin, otherwise known as my partner in crime, Tonya, and I were the only ones to see a brilliant fireball streak across the sky. It was huge, and visible for what seemed to be a long stretch of time. It appeared to have landed in the field next to Grandma and Grandpa’s. We were dumbfounded—then scared at the possibilities that flooded our brains (was it a meteorite that just landed in the field? was it a bomb? was it an airplane crash? was it a UFO?)—then went screaming into the house. We made a real racket telling everyone what we’d seen. Of course our boy cousins didn’t believe us. But some of the adults must have sensed the truth in our voices and came out into the bitterly cold Michigan night and looked where we thought it must have landed, in the snow-dusted, broken-frozen-corn-stalk-scattered corn field.
Surely there must be a fiery piece of space rock laying in a crater, still smoking. Of course we never found it and I heard later on that it was seen, or even landed, in upper Michigan, so we were way off with our guess of the field next door. But we still talk about that huge white fireball we saw.

The most significant shooting star story I have after Kade died was driving to a Compassionate Friends meeting in winter 2014. After daylight saving time ended, the 6:30 p.m. drive was pitch black, and I cranked the music, taking advantage of being alone in the car. Even music Kade would have HATED can prompt tears. Even bouncy music with no Kade connection whatsoever, that I really like, can bring on tears. Music has that way of touching the soul.

Jimi Hendrix’ Purple Haze came on. I totally lost it because Kade had Hendrix on his playlist, and would have dug that particular song. Purple was his favorite color, he was a guitarist, and, well, it was Jimi Hendrix. Tears gave way to a screaming rant about his death in my car. Kade should be listening to Jimi Hendrix! Tears, and yelling. There really aren’t that many opportunities of solitude to let loose, and it was happening.

Then the direction on the highway I was heading, with the curves and the hills just right, enabled me to see a giant star lit up in the foothills. It quieted me. I pondered whether seeing it right then, at a painfully raw moment, was a sign from Kade, or God, and how I should take it. As I was wondering, and still crying (because a new song had come on prompting new tears), I turned onto Wadsworth and headed north.

Still ruminating on whether the lit-up star was a sign, and from whom, I SAW A REAL SHOOTING STAR, in perfect view through my windshield. That shut me up. OK, Kade, I saw it. I smiled. I laughed. I am so thick that it took two, not just one, stars for me to understand that Kade (or some power) was shooting a sign my way. He was OK. It was OK. It was going to be OK.

I’ve had a lot of star and shooting star signs thrown my way, at just the right times, where I am left smiling and thanking Kade.

Having a symbol or symbols for your deceased child can be an expensive endeavor. I’ve scoured my favorite clothing websites for items with stars. I have star shirts from Express, Loft, H & M, and probably more places I’m forgetting. I have homemade jewelry and home décor from Etsy, an artisan website. I’ve ordered a large, colorful, hanging paper star for Kade’s room. Some of the baby gifts I’ve bought for others have been star-themed. And of course, a shooting star is incorporated in my tattoo.

I stop people wearing stars. I make Brian drive me to the middle of nowhere to get away from the town lights whenever we’re in the mountains, and I stand outside, usually in the cold, and lean back over the hood of my car taking in the whole sky for shooting stars.

The shooting star pendant I wear, that contains some of Kade’s cremains, is one I had custom-designed to represent him, when the ones in the funeral home catalog did not do him justice. No thank you to the plain vial. Thank goodness my online search led me to Starseed Gems and Lynn, a bereaved mom who helps design the perfect, colorful, expressive piece. She told me that blue stars are the hottest, but burn out the soonest. Blue it was. She mixes the cremains with luminescent powder, so it faintly glows in the dark, and puts it in the colored resin, so Kade is in the gem. The StarSeed gem. All elements in our bodies come from stars. We are all stardust. I love the piece and wear it almost every day. It is the perfect perfect piece I was looking for, to wear close to my heart.