Of death and life and what it is to be human...
So... as it is now Friday morning... in two days I celebrate the day of my birth. But I also mourn the 1 year anniversary of my younger sister's death.
My sister died on my birthday. It was the wee hours of the morning, and an awful car wreck. It ripped my Mama apart... she lost her best friend. But I was more okay. My brand new clock with a brand new battery, hanging on the wall of the room I was in, stopped minutes after the estimated time of the car wreck. I knew. I knew that she was okay.
I loved my sister dearly, and envied her shock of red, red hair. There's so many emotions though. I'm angry and I feel marginalized for this day that used to be mine and a happy occasion now being tainted forever with her passing. And because I feel that way, I also feel like an absolute ass who should be ashamed of herself for thinking and feeling that way.
All week, my Mama has been awash in her grief, I'm not even sure if she remembers at this point that I also have a connection to that day. And even though my psyche pouts at me like a petulant child, I'm not going to be the freakishly self-centered douche to say something. The woman buried her child for crying out loud.
Though try as I might I can't make the feelings go away.
Mama used to be this joy, this light in the world that nothing could extinguish. She's been through all kinds of hell, but she was hope personified. But she's wan, even a year later... she clings to memorials of my sister like a drowning man to a floating barrel.
And part of me is looking at the world in awe and anger as the irony sets in deep. Tesha had two kids. Babies still. Babies about the age I was when Mama gave me up to Jackie so that I could be raised in a better place. Jackie who was also done raising her kids only barely, who was also the same age Mama is now. So now, instead of being raised by my sister, who was headed down a bad path in a big hurry, they're being raised by Mama.
It feels as if the Fates took Tesha at that time on that day to close the loop that was started during the one-weekend-stand that saw me conceived.
And I don't know how to feel about that.
My sister died on my birthday. It was the wee hours of the morning, and an awful car wreck. It ripped my Mama apart... she lost her best friend. But I was more okay. My brand new clock with a brand new battery, hanging on the wall of the room I was in, stopped minutes after the estimated time of the car wreck. I knew. I knew that she was okay.
I loved my sister dearly, and envied her shock of red, red hair. There's so many emotions though. I'm angry and I feel marginalized for this day that used to be mine and a happy occasion now being tainted forever with her passing. And because I feel that way, I also feel like an absolute ass who should be ashamed of herself for thinking and feeling that way.
All week, my Mama has been awash in her grief, I'm not even sure if she remembers at this point that I also have a connection to that day. And even though my psyche pouts at me like a petulant child, I'm not going to be the freakishly self-centered douche to say something. The woman buried her child for crying out loud.
Though try as I might I can't make the feelings go away.
Mama used to be this joy, this light in the world that nothing could extinguish. She's been through all kinds of hell, but she was hope personified. But she's wan, even a year later... she clings to memorials of my sister like a drowning man to a floating barrel.
And part of me is looking at the world in awe and anger as the irony sets in deep. Tesha had two kids. Babies still. Babies about the age I was when Mama gave me up to Jackie so that I could be raised in a better place. Jackie who was also done raising her kids only barely, who was also the same age Mama is now. So now, instead of being raised by my sister, who was headed down a bad path in a big hurry, they're being raised by Mama.
It feels as if the Fates took Tesha at that time on that day to close the loop that was started during the one-weekend-stand that saw me conceived.
And I don't know how to feel about that.