Tonight is a night of memory. Sometimes that isn't a good thing, or doesn't feel like a good thing. Sometimes I'd rather have the memories stay at bay and just let me sleep, sometimes I'd just like the memories go away completely.
The anniversary of my brother's death is coming up. It makes me remember what was happening all those years ago. The day he went missing I was in Banff, enjoying a band festival. When my family found out he was dead, a week later, I was out having dinner with friends, it was the first time I'd been away from a phone for a week. It felt wrong, it still feels wrong that while his life was ending, mine was celebrating.
Ironically, it's not my brother's death, however, that weighs most heavy on my mind tonight. Tonight I was reminded how valuable sister's are, how much that relationship is treasured and sought. How close sister's can be to us, no one else can be a friend like a sister.
You know, I had to look up the date of her death. I can never remember what day it was... It just was. I still don't really know what date is was that morning.. I think it was the 23rd of December, but it might have been the 22nd, it depends on if they put the time of death before or after midnight. I was dancing in the kitchen with my almost 2 year old son to "Six White Boomers". We were getting ready for Christmas and it was a happy day. The sun was shining and the snow was glistening when a police officer knocked on the door. I've never had a reason to fear the police. I've always looked up to them and honoured them so when they knocked on my door, I didn't even think about it until they asked if one of them could take my son to the other room and I saw the looks on their faces. I knew then I wasn't going to like what they had to say but I was totally unprepared for the news.
My parents were out of town and I honestly thought I was going to hear that they had had an accident. You're supposed to lose parents. No one wants to, no one is ever truly prepared for it, but it's the natural course of life. You aren't supposed to lose siblings.
So many thoughts ran through my head. A selfish one "I'm the only one left", a determined one "I want to bring my nephews home", a horrified one "How can this be true? How can it have happened?", and a controlled one "Mom's not here, I have to find Mom. There's so many people to call, so much to do".
I don't know how to recover from this. Even after all these years, I don't know how to live without my siblings. I still want to run to them, to talk, to be their sister.
Tonight, I close my eyes and I see those policemen at my door. I now fear their presence... not because they'll hurt me, or punish me, but that they'll be the bearer of bad news. That they'll be coming to tell me someone else I love has gone. Tonight I'm reliving the morning after my sister died. It hurts. Seven and a half years later, the pain is just as strong, the missing her is still so intense only now there's nothing to distract me from the moment, the emotion. There's no one to find, no one to care for, no one to need me in this moment. There's also no one here to catch me as I fall.
Except my Savior, my Jesus. He's gently leading me. He knows tears heal, that I need to face these things and He gently leads me in the dance... It's painful though. I don't want to be found. I don't want to be found. I don't want to feel this pain, this intensity that I can no longer escape from.
God hold me up. Carry me through. Heal my heart and make me new. How do I go on? How do I embrace the pain of losing my friends, my loved ones, my siblings? I've survived by shutting down... How do I survive the pain of restarting? Can I?
I want to dance the dance of joy. I want to be alive, I'm just afraid of the path to get there.
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