Two Months...

I’ve been reading some on grief and trying to understand the stages that everyone speaks of. I’m learning that losing a sibling to something such as a car accident (unanticipated death) has affects such as PTSD; and the death notification plays into that as well.  I never would have thought to link PTSD to losing a sibling to an unexpected accident, but having lived this horrific nightmare for the last two months, that makes perfect sense to me. I know that there is simply no “easy” way to tell a parent or Sibling that their child/sibling has been killed in an accident, but I am certainly haunted by some of the aspects of Jessica’s notification. It’s something since the moment that authorities arrived at the hospital in the wee hours of August 2, 2010 that has rocked me to my core. I was robbed of hours that I could have and should have spent holding my sister’s warm body.

I’m two month's into this tragedy and I still find myself thinking that this just can’t possibly be real. I look around at all of the friends that Jess has left behind and my heart feels a never ending pain. Jessica had a tight group of friends and they all loved each other…watching all of them suffer in pain with the loss of their best friend leaves a hole in my heart. Meanwhile I am trying to find my way in life again,without Jessica, the sister and best friend I loved, adored and looked up to. The magnitude of pain that the death of you has left in the lives of our family, and ALL our friends, is simply a pain WITHOUT definition. The word pain does not even describe what we are feeling, and I am certain I speak for all of us when I say that.

This is what I struggle with; the pain is unmeasurable and completely indescribable, how in God’s name will any of us heal and find our “new normal?”  And I use the term “heal” very loosely here… there will NEVER be a true healing but I need a healing where I feel I can breath again.

I TRUST that God will hold all of us through our anguish, anger, questions and pain…..but to a grieving sister, the enormity of it all seems without end.

I’m writing this tonight because I want you all to know that I am not always so strong, nor are other grieving siblings (mothers, fathers, friends, family). 

I need to invent a word that describes this deep deep feeling of loss… if Jessica were here she’d come up with a really good goofy one and she’d say it in one of her crazy voices. 

To my friends that ask what they can do for me/us….send prayers, every single day. I can’t express enough,  I have no idea how I will get through the rest of my life without Jessica by my side, except with literally, one single step at a time.

What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us. – Helen Keller

Dreaming of you...

I didn’t sleep very well last night. I haven’t slept really well in a lot of nights but last night I dreamt about you. In the dream you came to me in the middle of the night and you were trying to get me to remember this telephone number. I couldn’t seem to remember it for the life of me you kept saying, “it is a lot like that song, ‘867-5309’, but the number is ‘867-5329’”. So I kept singing it over and over again. I would be singing it and mess up and you would poke me in the rib cage, letting me know that I didn’t have it right, but the more that I sang it the more I kept getting the numbers mixed up. When I woke up this morning I was so angry at myself because it was so important to you that I remember that number and I couldn’t remember it, even with the song. I have literally been angry all morning and I just can’t seem to shake this feeling of complete failure, like I have absolutely let you down when you needed me the most.

After that dream last night, I think I am just trying so desperately to hold on to you, specifically, your life. I think that I am afraid that if I stop trying to pursue your favorite people, places, and things that I will somehow lose sight of who you were.

But we both know who you were. The girl that fell down stairs and ran into parked cars and slept a lot and banged her head on tables. You are my sister and my best friend!

Define Normal

One of the most popular questions that I have heard in the last month is: "What happened?" Normal, everyday people just trying to understand how this could happen to an "ordinary" family, all the while thinking in their head, "If something like this could happen to them, perhaps it could happen to me too." People seem to grasp at straws when faced with tragedy that hits so close to home. My reply to them varies day by day some days (the easier ones) I tell them what occurred. On the bad days, I simply look at them and say, "Does it matter?" This statement might sound cold, but reliving the story doesn't change the fact that you are gone and we are here, left to pick up the broken pieces of our shattered existence. 

I have listened to so many comments, conversations, and statements of the "what ifs" and the "should haves".  Really, does it matter? What if we didn't take her home? What if we did work overtime? I should have said we couldn't take her home. I should have done more. What if we had taken a different route? I even heard about someone asking why you were out at 11:00 at night, they obviously have a severe case of amnesia and can't remember being 20. I guess that is normal, though. It gives people comfort thinking that your fate could have been changed by their words or actions. Something I realized that night in the hospital was that no one could have done anything and nothing could ever bring you back because life doesn't give do-overs. Wouldn't that be nice if it did?

My only regret is one that has nothing to do with what came to be that night, but more to do with the fact that I hadn't eaten up as much time as possible with you while you were here. Now I am left writing my sentiments to you in a blog, which hardly seems sufficient.

The five stages of grief are 1) Denial, 2) Anger, 3) Bargaining, 4) Depression,    5) Acceptance, and I have played witness to at least the first four and have been guilty of acting them out as well. Acceptance, I think, is probably the hardest to grasp because how do accept a 20 year old's sudden death? In true Jessica character, I have actually been taking these stages on in reverse. I was talking to a friend last night and told her that the further I get from the night of August 22nd, the easier it is to deny it ever happened.

Jared took Brayden fishing down at the pond today and I remember last summer when I took you down there to try to teach you how to fish. HA! A lost cause, as I quickly realized. I spent an hour trying to teach you how to bait a hook while you spent an hour texting. I finally gave up on that task and moved on to teaching you how to cast the line, for which you got stuck in a tree, a rock, and the embankment 40 feet opposite to us. By the end of the two hour session, I had baited, cast, and reeled in "your" fish, and you were so excited, but then gave me a lecture about how disappointed PETA activists would be at the cruel treatment of the fish in the creek and went back to texting. I never invited you to go fishing with me ever again.

Even if I did in the moment, I don't regret trying to teach you how to fish that day, and I like to think that you didn't either.