Tomorrow will be one month since my sister died. I know that I promised to finish her story on my last post, but it`s hard to talk about it, and even harder to read words of condolences. Its almost as if, when I hear others commiserate, I step out of the fog that is letting me hide from my very raw feelings and the pain is horrendous.
I have been talking to someone about all of this, and it has been suggested that I try my best to continue to keep it in the open, becuase I have a tendency of burring my emotions – the bad ones anyway, and that is bad becuase what happens when the hole I fill with my bad feelings is full and begins to over flow?
So.
The funeral.
It was quite special. My dad carried my sister – she was cremated, and my brother and I walked arm and arm with my father. I ended up agreeing to wear my socks, and the shoes i have gotten, and had brought to show every one two days before my sisters death. The shoes were not in anyway funeral appropriate attire, but Sheri LOVED the shoes. She was quite jealous of them, and I was convinced int he end, and wore them. I got some weird looks from the people, but I didn’t care.
A lot of people came to the funeral. And quite a few came up and spoke about her. She was so special. She reached everyone she met, in one way or another. If you talked to her for five minutes, they were five minutes you would remember all your life. She had a presence.
I did not cry. I came close, When my husband cried, but I was strong enough to hold it in.
We buried my sister with Mom. I hated, HATED the idea of her being in the ground alone, so I was very happy when they said we would be able to put her with mom. My dad placed her urn in a velvet bag, we gave her smokes, her friend Randi gave her a teddy bear – Sheri LOVED stuffed animals. Loved them.
When the words were said, the funeral director asked all the relatives and friends to move back, to give us a few minutes alone, as a family. My husband and I, Daniel and his fiancee, My dad and his wonderfully strong wife, our boys and Danny’s girls, we stood there, under the grey sky, arms linked, heads bowed.
It had been cloudy, the rain threatening clouds all day. No blue sky, just bleak grey as far as you could see. When I awoke the morning of her funeral, I thought it was fitting. We stood there, And The pain was so much worse at that moment in time. I think, had we not all been arm and arm, supporting each other, we would have fallen from the pain.
Just as my dad started to sob, that audible, breath gasping kind of cry, the kind of cry that signify’s real pain, the sun broke through the clouds, for the first time in three days, so bright we winced. My dad laughed. Does it sound stupid? I don’t care. We are all positive, POSITIVE, that that ray of sun, falling from the sky right on us at our darkest and most painful moments was my sister. And she was telling us it would be OK.
Now, almost a full month later, when I am at my lowest, when it feels like my heart is going to fall right out of my chest, when I have to cross my arms and curl into myself to try and keep myself whole, I try to remember that ray of sun.
It’s doesn’t always work. Especially when I am alone, or in the dark of the night, but sometimes, I can take peace from the thought.
My dad Picked these flowers for my sisters service. They are beyond beautiful, and she would have approved of them, completely. On the Sunday before my sister died, I was telling him that the tattoo he has in remembrance of my mother looks lopsided. That there is an empty space that looks weird. At the time, he laughed at me, telling me to take my complaints to the artist who drew the tattoo – haha dad, it was me who drew it.
In any case, I need to stick these flower photos on a flash drive and take them to my dads. I don’t want to have to re-size them smaller to send VIA email becuase he is going to have the big lily in the front tattoo’d on to his arm. It will fill up the empty space in my mother’s tattoo.
