Junebug loved staying home from school with Mary Katherine. When Mary Katherine rang the doorbell in the morning before school, Junebug ran to the door, and Mary Katherine smiled with her gold front tooth, hugged her hard, and often whispered, "I have something for you." Junebug followed her into the laundry room, where Mary Katherine would sneak her a piece of candy. Junebug hugged her again, and most mornings she did not want to leave her side. It was easy to convince her mom that her asthma was bad and she needed to stay home. And maybe I did need some room to breathe as the youngest of five, in a house full of cats and dogs and, at various times, almost any animal that could even loosely be considered a pet.

After everyone left the house, it grew quiet. Junebug watched The Price Is Right with Mary Katherine while she folded laundry at the kitchen table. Junebug knew when Mary Katherine looked down, shaking her head, that something was wrong. Junebug's sadness was very small compared to the hardships Mary Katherine faced. She was the mother of thirteen children and married to a nice man named James who worked hard, but there was too much to overcome.

She was a proud woman who was embarrassed that she did not know how to read. She loved to brag about keeping her figure, but you could tell the thick pantyhose she wore for her circulation and the twitch in her eye put a dent in her vanity. Mary Katherine was a very beautiful woman with her own style.

Mary Katherine complained about her church friends who hurt her feelings, but they certainly did not stop her from singing church hymns, which were the only words of God Junebug heard in her house. Junebug loved Mary Katherine's warm church, and Mary Katherine's hot homemade rolls were the best.

After she finished folding laundry and cleaning, they would go to the TV room, where Mary Katherine ironed and watched her favorite soap operas. There was something soothing about the rhythmic sound of steam coming from the iron. It was as if the wrinkles magically disappeared, along with the sadness they shared. By then, the school day was almost over, and her siblings would be home soon. Junebug felt the pit in her stomach as she thought about school the next day, and she soaked up the last hour resting her head on Mary Katherine's lap.

Off and on throughout my elementary school years, I had many days with Mary Katherine. In hindsight, I can see how this only contributed to my school phobia, which grew increasingly worse once I hit middle school. Between a full house and working full time, my mom thought the quickest fix was not to find a therapist for me, but to take me to a psychiatrist, who said that the next time I did not want to go to school, I would have to go to a hospital.

A few days later, I packed my bags for a two-week stay at a psychiatric hospital, and it would forever change my life. In those days, adults and children were in the same unit, and I was a seventh grader who had recently turned thirteen. The few other teenagers on the unit were a few years older than me. I cried about going to school and had a sticker collection; they had problems far beyond my years.

While a hospital was not where I belonged, there was no place I wanted to be. My only diagnosis was separation anxiety. As I hugged Mary Katherine before I left, the floorboards shifted underneath me, because when I returned, even Mary Katherine looked at me differently. Or maybe it was me who now saw her in the same mistrusting light I saw other adults.

* * *

I remember when I would fly kites with my dad. He wet his finger and stuck it in the air to determine which direction the wind was blowing, and then his kite would gracefully lift into the sky. He did not tell me about winds that come out of nowhere, like the middle-of-the-night heart attack he had when I was six, or the nightmare of losing my own husband to addiction decades later. He was gentle with me, like the wind that lifted his kites, but life after him has been much less so.

Since losing him, it's been hard to trust the ground underneath me. When I found an anchor like Mary Katherine, I did not know how or when to let go. While holding on for dear life and staying home with her felt like it kept me from blowing away, it was an illusion. I see now that my tendency to stay too long has hurt me many times in my life.

It's like a kite stuck in a tree, and the kite is Junebug in her bed, waking up to her dad dying: too paralyzed to move, too far from her body to even know and feel who she is. What I know now is that there are people, like my dad, who can hold me like a kite on a string and let me blow in the wind this way and that on my lifelong process of learning who I am. And when I get stuck, they remind me of who I am, and then I can find my way down from the highest of trees, back to the ground, in my body, on my own two feet.

Almost eleven years later, I can see I have come far, and life still feels overwhelming at times, though in a different way than it once did. While I know where I belong much more than I did as a child, grief and trauma separate you from the world, and finding your way back is not linear or fast. I can still find myself stuck high in a tree in a flash, so many years later.

As a therapist used to say, healthy grieving takes a lifetime. I think it is different for everyone, but I know the consequence of running from it, so I try to be gentle with myself as I move through life this way and that. Somehow, I seem to always land on my feet again and again, with Junebug by my side. It is a true gift that has come with hard work.

Mary Katherine Davis in the photo who worked for my family and was part of our family until she died when I was in my mid 20's. Song is I Found You by Alabama Shakes.