Once upon a parenting forum, in the time of the Before (a long, long time ago), I knew a woman named Lulu.
Actually, Lulu wasn’t her real name, just her screen name. But that’s what everyone on this forum knew her as– Lulu. And everyone on this forum knew her– she was a site moderator and unapologetic alpha-female. Lots of bloggers knew her as well. Her blog, Unperfect Life, is still here. She buried her sister just days before she died herself.
Lulu passed away, suddenly and unexpectedly, just a few days after Tony died. I remember one late afternoon out the front of my purple–becoming–orange house, Fairie Sarie telling me that Lulu had died and being unable to articulate anything except “Our Lulu? From the forum Lulu?”
What resulted was just the queerest feeling– one of those sliding door anomalies, where things are shifting just beneath your surface in a whole other life. In that other life, this news gutted me. It was monumental.
In this life, I was stunned but not even surprised. The whole world had turned upside down. Of course there were going to other be casualties, other losses just as great as my own.
Lulu’s avatar- know this isn’t how she actually looked… but it’s how I see her in my mind, still.
I’m not even sure why I’m writing this post. Only that I think of Lulu– a woman I never even met In Real Life– often. I hope her kids are doing okay without their most awesome, amazing mother. Bizarrely, I credit Lulu with teaching me so many things about child-raising, so many things about life in general. About standing up for yourself and believing in your own opinion. About having compassion and empathy and a sense of humour. About treating our children they way they deserve to be treated– like the little people they are.
Lulu was, online, an absolute force of nature, and I can only imagine she would have been the same In Real Life. She was funny and honest and wise in that cool-auntie way that some women have about them.
When I look back on it, try to verbalise it or write it down, the most important lesson I learned from Lulu sounds silly and simple. It’s more an attitude than a ritual. And I still put it into practice sometimes now, five years after I ‘met’ her for the first time.
Some days, its both useful and practical to vacuum the house in a tiara.
Why?
Because you are a motherfucking princess.
And why the hell not.
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I’m still haunted by her death as well. That one week in January…all the deaths, all the little children left behind. I think it’s even harder to accept when someone who is such a force of nature, whose life energy is so strong, is suddenly gone. It just doesn’t seem possible. But of, just because something is inconceivable, doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. x
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The oddest things remind me of lulu. Vibrators, Bach flower essences, having a teenage daughter…
I still haven’t got my head wrapped round that she’s gone. She was larger then life.
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Funny, I thought of her yesterday when I read your post about lotions and potions. I miss her still and think of her often. Such an amazing chick.
Gorgeous IRL as online, with a very endearing vulnerability in the flesh. And she would have bled for you, if possible, for your pain, honey. One in a squillion, that chick. A true ‘ripple effect’.
She loved ya, mate xxx
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I did not know this Lulu of whom you speak, and yet I cry for her and I wonder like you do of her IRL family. I have my Lulus and I hope I will always, but she sounded awesome. I will also remember forever to vacuum in a tiara somedays. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and feelings xo
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Just reading the title was enough to make me tear up, because I knew who it was going to be about. I never really spoke to Lulu much, but she’s definitely made an impact on my life too.
I remember trying to come up with something comforting to say to her when her sister died, and failing. Then everything happened over here on your blog with Tony and it was pushed aside while I tried to think of what to say to you… And what, a day later?, she died. I wish I could have told her how much I respected her. How much I strive to be like her in my parenting. I wish she could have been my birth-door bitch. I feel like I’ve discovered more about her since she left than I ever knew while she was here.
The post on my blog from the day she left just says “fark”… What else can you say?
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I often think about Lulu and have a chuckle to myself about things we laughed about. Sometimes I will see an ‘inside joke’ between her and I and I’ll want to message her and tell her about like we use to do. I totally get what you mean, when you talk about finding out about her death. I was speechless. I remember calling Vicky and all I could say was “Lucy’s dead” ….. and she, like me, was just speechless. It was so surreal.