Memorial Weekend Reflections

Saturday of Memorial weekend, Trent and I were running errands as we drove past the cemetery where my sister and grandparents have been laid to rest.   Can I just say I hate the cemetery.  I hate that 29 years after my sister passed, I still can't help but cry when I think of all that we missed.  I know I will see her again.  I know that she is free of the pain and difficulty that would have been hers had she lived.  This mortal life is not an easy thing to experience.  To me she was perfect and consequently, what 9 year old wouldn't receive all that heaven has to offer.

I have concluded over the years, that it is me I feel sorry for.  I can't seem to forgive myself for not holding her hand the last day she was alive.  I didn't know how close she was to dying.  She spent the day moaning as she lay in the rented hospital bed that had been in our living room for months.

I hated the continual reminder of what was to come.  I just wanted to remember her as she was, a beautiful girl with her long, strawberry blond hair and blue eyes that sparkled.  Not the girl who was now blind, deaf and unable to talk due to paralysis. 

Early on, when we first learned her prognosis was terminal, she had told me she was afraid to die.  I still cling to my faith that what I told her at the young age of 15 is as true today as it was then.  That she would be free of the pain and that grandpa would be there to meet her, to welcome her home.  That she would not be afraid, but happy and at peace.

Maybe that was one of my better moments.  The one that haunts me still is that her last day, I focused more on myself and trying to avoid the pain, than embrace it and her head-on.   I talked to my mom about the moaning and crying.  My mom said, "She just wants to be close to you."  Rather than hold her hand and spend time with her, I stayed in my room with my adolescent interests, trying to drowned out what I referred to at the time, as the constant noise.  By the end of what seemed a day that would never end, I begged my mom to take her to the hospital where she could get something for the pain.  My parents, I think, had wanted to have her pass at home, but decided to take her.

The next morning, we went to school as usual.  When I came home, I noticed my dad's work truck in the garage.  My dad never took a sick or vacation day from work--ever.  I immediately knew that something was up.  I called my aunt who was watching my baby brother to see what she knew.  Rather than answer my question, she told me to hold on.  My mom came to the phone.  I tried to wrap my brain around my mom being at my aunt's and not at the hospital with Becky.  That is when my mom told me that Becky had died in the hospital earlier that day.  While I was home in bed that night, my parents tried to load her in the car.  When she stopped breathing, they had called an ambulance.  She had stopped breathing 3 times on the way to the hospital, but started on her own each time, finally taking her last breath later that morning with my mom at her side.

Even though I knew she was terminal, because of the location of a benign tumor growing in her brain-stem, I still didn't recognize the end.  I didn't take the opportunity to hold her hand or say good bye.  I would like to think that I have learned something from this.  That perhaps this experience has helped me appreciate the fragility of life and increased the number of times I have said something I otherwise would have left unsaid.  Still, I take things and people for granted at times and there is definitely more room for improvement.

Here's to my dear, sweet baby sister, Rebecca  Helen Mills.  I named my baby after you.  You are always in my thoughts.  If you had lived, I know we would have been there for each other.  Mom always said you and I were most alike spiritually.  I like to think we would have been there for each other through thick and thin and would have understood each other, shared the same values and goals and been best friends.  You are one of the biggest reasons I try to be the best person I can be.  I want to be worthy to be with you some day.  To me you are perfect and each day I strive to be worthy to dwell with you in God's presence.

I do not like to think of your body in a grave, but I will put aside those feelings, to take my children there each Memorial Day, so they can feel the sacredness and solemnity and know that I have not nor ever will, forget you.