How The Sky Helped Ease My Survivor’s Guilt
Every beautiful sky that Ana couldn’t see made me think I was a failure
My daughter, Ana, loved to look at the sky. Her phone was filled with photos of sunsets, acres of clear blue vistas and feathery cirrus clouds that curled above the trees in our sleepy little neighborhood in New York.
Roughly 11 of the 90 or so photos on Ana’s Instagram feed feature the sky. Her Instagram account still exists, over seven years after she died. I used to visit her feed and scroll through the photos, but now I leave it there in case someone from Ana’s distant past wants to visit it, some long-ago child now all grown up.
I used to burst into tears when, after days of relentless rain, the weather cleared and the sky bloomed blue and white. I wanted Ana to see that perfect sky so badly that it took my breath away. My grief inevitably turned into guilt and the painful question, why am I still here when Ana is not?
I’ve seen many more skies than Ana did in her short life. That’s not the extent of the unfairness though. Ana died in March, the worst month for skies. That year, we had storms nearly every…
