Grief is a universal emotion that all of us, at one point or another, have to go through and learn to cope with. But nothing can ever prepare a parent to accept an unnatural order of things: losing a child.
“I hoped that when the time arrived, I would have the chance for farewells. If that wish were granted, I could with total content ride the train to my final destination. It never occurred to me that one of my children might board the train first, pulling away as her parents wept on the platform.” read David Frum‘s words in the astoundingly beautiful piece he wrote for The Atlantic in his eldest daughter Miranda’s memory.
“Miranda’s Last Gift” makes even the little daily happenstances recounted in it capable of bringing tears to your eyes as you can feel a father’s undying love for the daughter he tragically had to witness be laid to rest.
Too soon, too sudden
In 2018, after suddenly suffering from eyesight issues, Miranda was diagnosed with “a large brain tumor that was squeezing her optic nerves.” It wasn’t cancerous, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous. It risked blinding her completely, but removing it also implied potential dangers – as it is almost inevitable when the affected organ is the brain.
She was my age when diagnosed with the tumor. I too got a tumor removed this year, at 26. Undergoing these kinds of experiences, one gets to see how much a parent suffers with the uncertainty of not knowing whether their child will be all right by the end of it all.
Miranda’s 12-hour surgery in 2019 went well. The worst seemed to have passed. However, one February day, post-pandemic, the family “received the devastating news that Miranda had been found dead in her Brooklyn apartment. Illness overwhelmed her depleted immune system and stopped her heart. She collapsed at about three in the morning. When she was found, Ringo was lying beside her.”
Ringo is the Cavalier King Charles spaniel Miranda’s parents gifted her at a time when she most needed a loyal four-legged companion. As Miranda herself proclaimed, he was the best gift she ever got. And he is Miranda’s last gift. As the last paragraph of the moving feature goes:
“Over 32 years of life, Miranda gave me many gifts. She gave me joy, and pride, and the wisdom that can be learned only from loving another being more than one loves oneself. Then, at the end, she gave me one last gift, the most immediately necessary of them all. She left me the means to expiate all those sins of omission and commission that crowd my mind at three in the morning. She left me Ringo.”
It doesn’t matter if Frum politically leans left or right; if he served one party or the other. All of that fades into the background under the universal weight of bereavement. It is a moment that asks us to put our political differences aside and use our empathy first, that too often dormant sentiment. We are all human, at the end of the day, infinitely striving in a world that can be cold and ruthless, just as it can be bright and beautiful.
