Looking back over my shoulder

In hindsight, it is all there in front of me...she is the person that she was meant to be...it just wasn't who I thought she would be.  She sang her way through kindergarden and was told in grade one on ly to sing at recess.  By grade two she was told not to sing in class and that translated into music lessons.  She got her grade 2 theory and grade 8 Royal Conservatory in singing.  That told those teachers.  But they were good teachers and I guess there is little room for singing in class when there are 20 odd other chldren in the class.  She liked to wear dresses.  The children laughed.  At the end of the summer when going into grade 5 she had picked out a pretty white blouse and red plaid jumper to wear to school.  She looked so pretty, but more importantly she felt good about herself.  Just s she was about to leave for school she ran upstairs and put on jeans and a tshirt.  Puzzled, I followed behind with her younger sister to the first day of classes, only to hear two of her 'friends' say when J arrived, that they were betting that she had worn a dress.  Darn, they were disapointed.  But it was a condescending tone and it didn't sit well with me anyway.  So by grade 7 she went to a school where these 'friends' weren't and life went on smoothly.  She was J and laughed and saw unicorns in the woods near home and fairies in the back garden.  In grade 9 she got sick.

She didn't need to eat, only weak people did.  As we watched her beautiful 130 pound body widdle away to under 90 pounds, we felt helpless.  Every doctor, nurse, dietician, counsellor, nutritionist we could find tried to help.  One day she introduced me to the "demon" (as she called it) who lived inside of her and said that one of them was going to have to die.  She had decided the demon had to go.  It was a long hard and painful crawl for her, for all of us, out of that black hole but she did it.  It took 2 and a half years, but she emerged a healthy young beautiful young woman.  The thing was, the old J was gone.  The new J is beautiful.  Her journey took her to Jesus.  She is a born again post modern Christian and a beautiful kind and generous soul.  But the old J is gone.  I guess this is my way of mourning that passing.  I have done so here awkwardly but it is good to put it in writing cos it has lived in my head for too long.