Oh, this winter is horrid and I’m completely sick of it. I
waved my white flag in February. It’s now April. And still winter.
So, what will I talk about that will make this post not
depressing?
My grief.
Ha. What? I’m going to talk about grief and somehow that
will not be depressing?
Yep. Stick with me, here.
Today, my sister has been in Heaven just as long as she
spent time with me and my family here on Earth.
13 years.
Dude. My brain is having a hard time wrapping around that.
How could that much time have passed? I can still see her big, blue eyes, her huge
smile and her snarky attitude appear right before my eyes. I haven’t lost any
little bit of her, but it’s seriously been 13 years?
This is where the good comes into play. The way that this
post will not end badly or sad. It’s what I think of as “good” grief. Thinking
about every wonderful thing that has happened in my life that contains my
sister.
Playing barbies, watching Disney movies, singing to
Backstreet boys, Boyz II men, N-Sync, and 98 degrees. (HA!) Oh, and Celine
Dion. We spent so much time cutting out pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio from
countless teen magazines and ‘sticky-tacking’ them all to the wall. (yay
Titanic!) Sometimes with blue sticky-tac that my mom hated because it left blue
marks on the walls. Whoops! We would pull out our baby-books and photo albums
and stare at all the pictures from when we were really little (like 1-3 years
old) and laugh and laugh, even though we were still really little. I remember
road trips to see family for holidays in our big conversion van, in the big
bench seat in the back, sharing a portable CD player. Dad got us an adaptor, so
we could each put in our own set of ginormous headphones to listen to the
Backstreet Boys, Boyz-II-men, N-Sync or Celine Dion at the same time.
I remember watching her play the piano, so little, but so
proud. And so much better than me! J Singing in church, as
loud as we possibly could. Looking at each other around our Dad, and laughing. That
giggle! I won’t ever forget that giggle. Sitting at the kitchen breakfast nook
at my grandparents, eating Kix with about 5 tablespoons of sugar on the top, so
then at the end you could basically eat all of the sugar that didn’t dissolve
in the milk. I remember doing those paint by number posters that we worked on in the upstairs
bathroom(?) of my grandparents farmhouse because the bathtub up there was really
cool, according to Laura. It was pink. J
These little memories. They are so fantastic. And they are always the things I think about on this day. She was a gift. My awesome big
sister.
See, I told you.
The good grief.
May these memories make you smile today, too.
