Happy Birthday, Brother

Today, you would have turned 34.  Your son says he's going to crack you a home run in his baseball game today, just for you.  I know you'll see it.  I know you;re with him at every at-bat, every pitch.  Tonight, we will write messages on balloons and send them to the angels, hoping they get to you.  My heart is so full today, of love, of your smile, of a few tears, as I think of The Big Picture.  I sense how proud of us you are, for going on living, for finding joy in the most unexpected and amazing ways.  I am so thankful and in awe of the signs you continue to send us.  The kids found 4 more four-leaf clovers this last week.  We have found dozens now, always when we need guidance, or on someone's birthday or milestone, you send us more luck, more love, more evidence that you're not so far away after all.
I can see now how so many tiny pieces of this puzzle have all fit together to bring us to where we are today.  They didn't make sense at the time, and they don't always now  and they won't always in the future, but I can trust that it all makes sense, that our physical selves are incapable of grasping the clockwork of life and how each event takes place to create space for the next. I am filled with wonderment and love as I think of all of the people you have brought into our lives with your passing.  People who have made us laugh when we never thought we'd laugh again, people who have also been touched by similar sadness and we've found strength in each other's stories and proof that all things happen for a reason, people who are many shades of you, Brother, and that makes the missing you a little easier sometimes.  I am so grateful for this beautiful, difficult ang incredible LIFE.
You have been visiting us in dreams, always telling us things, explaining things we can't quite remember in waking, but we love that we've gotten to see your face, hear your voice, and we know that your words are in our hearts, even if our conscious minds hide it from us.  Thank you for that, it is so comforting to see you in dreaming.  I write each one down as best as I can remember it, and I love going back and reading about them and reading them to the kids.  One day, the kids will have these books, they will know our family history, and they will be able to share these stories with their kids, their grandkids, and I hope it goes on and on.
So, even though I have tears today, they are less of sadness, and more of love and appreciation for you, Bri, for the lessons you've taught us about life, about being imperfect and human and still amazing and precious, about family, about overcoming obstacles and pressing on even when we feel our last drop of resolve is used up.  I am thankful that I feel your presence today, I feel your love in my heart and know that you will be with us today, and you always are when our family is together.  I love you so much.  I miss you most when the kids are blowing out birthday candles or playing sports, because you were always right there.  I miss you when I'm having trouble understanding a struggle one of the kids is having, because you always offered a new perspective and helped me to understand their hearts.  You had a way of seeing into human nature with such compassion, you helped me learn to do the same.  I try my best every day to live in a way that makes you proud of me, and I hope you are.  I will try hard to feel less sadness and lacking, and more appreciation and understanding, because I know you're really not as far away as most people think.  You are in every sunrise, every raindrop, every burst of fireworks and every time the kids laugh, I hear you.  Thank you for blessing us with your life, and strengthening us through your passing. 

Love to you each day, always,

Your Big Sis

Coming Into The Light

I have survived the worst of broken hearts.  I have lived through horrific pain and death.  I have healed when everyone told me I would never be the same again:  they were right, I am not the same.  I am stronger, I am more compassionate, I have more purpose and presence and love.  My body is not broken, although it's still far from whole.  I see now how my broken heart blocked my path to healing even more than my broken back, my prosthetic hip, my broken arms...these things all healed; not the same, some will always cause me pain.  But what nearly killed me, what nearly took me from my children, it wasn't the morning of my car crash when I lay, bleeding out in a busted up van in a ditch.  It wasn't in the months that stretched into the five years after my accident.  It was my broken heart.  I didn't know who I was or what my purpose was if I couldn't be a nurse.  It was a dream I had chased for so many years, an identity I had fit snugly around me like my favorite sweater, protecting me from the cold...and I was so exposed, so raw to the elements and naked without it.  I tried to keep up the facade of cheerfulness, of hope and joy, when inside, I felt so empty and lost. This depression was so complicated, it touched every single facet of my life, tinged it with worthlessness and seeped the color out of my days, coloring them black like the nights that went on forever.  I fought to ignore the voice in my head that told me I wasn't worth loving, that my children were better off without me, that I was never going to live a day without pain.

 I sat in a courtroom one day where I told the social security judge why the doctors and I had decided I couldn't work anymore.  I sobbed to the point I could barely speak.  It literally destroyed me to admit publicly that I had given up on my dream.  I had never failed so miserably at anything in my life, unless you count my two marriages, but I had help destroying those.  I had never failed at anything I had tried so hard to achieve, and I didn't know what to do with that type of pain.

I had to face the anger I felt for the drunk driver who hit me.  I had been so afraid of how huge and powerful that anger was, I tried to completely deny that there was any anger at all for him.  I felt it was wrong of me to harbor anger for someone who had not set out to hurt me, but that anger was churning somewhere deep inside where I had locked the door and never wanted to go back.  But the truth was, until I was ready to face that anger, until I was ready to really sit with it and rage with it, howl like a damned banshee and cry the ugliest, most gut-wrenching sobs I've ever heard emanate from a human being, I knew I would not heal.  So I began to pray for him, to feel compassion for him, to understand that I was the lucky one, because I lived in an ever-widening circle of love and support, and I embraced that.  He could not.  Not through the haze of addiction.  I hope he heals.  We all deserve love.

It took me over seven years to work through that anger.  I still have my days when I have to cry, and I let the tears come because I know they cleanse the hurts.  I don't hide from the daily pain with medications, I don't self-medicate with alcohol or drugs of any kind; I medicate with love.  I fill the spaces where pain lives, fill them  up with love and I listen to my body when it whispers, "Love, you need to rest.  Put down the laundry, you've done enough today."  "Love, our bones feel 100 years old today.  Be kind to us."  Some days it's a whisper, some days it screams in my face "DON'T DO THAT, OWWWW!!!"  But I always listen now.  I'm done fighting against what I can't change; that robs me of my peace.  I'm done listening to the cruel voice in my head that doubts, undermines my joy.  I'm putting down the sword, and picking up my spade.  My life began a miracle, and it will end a miracle.  I will grow my garden, I will feed my family, I will heal with my herbs and nutrition, and I will live a full life.  I will not feel cheated.  I will not feel unloved.  Love begins with me, and I choose to live in love each day.