Feeling it All - A Note For My Late Sister

Somehow, 3 years have gone by despite our best efforts.

Grief is a visitor we must invite inside and offer tea. Allowing it to sit and stay as long as it needs without ushering it away as time ticks on.

I share a lot about joy and laughter and play; and while I savor these essential sweets that make this life delicious and fulfilling, I find myself wanting to leave out the ingredients that aren’t made of sugar.

My wholeness is not whole until it includes the anger, the grief, and the utter sadness that complete the recipe. What a privilege it is to love someone so much it leaves a permanent scar on your cosmic body when they are no longer physically here. To be transported back to simpler times when you hear a song or remember their laugh.

I can say that I enjoy each day more than ever before, because I am now painfully aware that these moments are truly a gift we are fortunate to receive. Gifts with no return address and no promise of more delivered tomorrow.

I spend my days rejoicing over the flowers and the trees, over the colors I perceive and for the sun that send us warmth and bright light. I honor the moon for charging the night and providing a blanket for the stars to lay on, grateful for the dance in which they orbit.

I know darkness well, and spent so much time with the blinds drawn closed, fearing that one day I’d be where I am now, bathing in light without you here to hold the majesty of it with me.

All that I am is a result of all that you were.

Each day we have a choice to surrender to what is, while singing in gratitude for the time spent and times to come; or we can fight the current while shaking our fists, closing our hearts and blindly hurling our weapons; insisting that our version of the recipe would have made a better pie.

We are not always meant to understand, but I do feel called to trust.

Losing you would not have been my plan, but my prayer is to make every day a testament to the faith I have that it all unfolds the way it’s meant to. Finally allowing myself to keep the blinds open for all the light pouring in, in deep reverence for the darkness that makes dawn possible.

I love you eternally, sisser.