Consumed with the loss of Vickie.
Having moments of awareness of the gifts that danced all around me, the loss is all I feel.
I can not feel gratitude, I can only think it.
The feelings of loss are all consuming as I watch life surround me, approach me, yet remain a million miles away.
So close yet so far.
It was a loss in my sister's life that brought her to our home, it was profound for her.
Todd and I opened our hearts and home without strings, without conditions. I watched as she riled in her loss as the gifts seemed to make her feel guilty for investing in her grief. She struggled through it rebelliously as she was torn by the two ends of her reality.
The gift offered by Todd and I was not part of hers and my cultural or family background.
Paying a price for kindness was all we had known, in the nine years since our reunion we have defied our training through love rather than through rebellion. I have turned away from the cultural obligatory dues I paid for having the same blood running through my veins and turned to unfamiliar territory.
Facing and honoring my fears and insecurities as they rose from the hell I was educated in masked by religion.
Discovering Todds and my similarities along with our differences through eyes of love rather than through comparison and self-criticism. Honoring and loving the gifts each of us offer without turning back on ourselves with criticism and judgment.
Honoring our own limitations has helped us see the gift in one's ability to do things for us that we ourselves are unable to do.
Letting go of the need, "to not need others", freed us to allow others love to shine through support and literally carrying us without agendas when standing seemed impossible.
Holding each other as we attempted standing on our own, not to stand for us, but to teach each other that though standing is scary and falling a possibility, there are open arms lovingly standing beside the other as long as one needs until they trust themselves to stand on their own. Allowing the time needed without making one feel obligated or forever in the other's debt.
I watched my sister, step into the security of Todds and my love, to know from her depth not just her mind that all we offered and gave was love and how freeing that love was for her.
She blossomed growing taller in self-trust and beauty as this exuded from every part of her. Radiantly she smiled and laughed through the day to day challenges of life, moving forward as she integrated who she had once been into who she was becoming as a result of her great loss.
Oh how quickly the universe required her new self to be tested as a greater loss than any of us could have ever seen coming took us all into a darkness that we struggled to survive. We were all blinded by this darkness and she grieving at this loss as well, became the light, the arms that held strong for us as I was shredded into molecules of fire and brimstone.
Shredded by this horror herself, she stood when I could not. Where her strength came from was beyond my comprehension at the time as I was unaware of the world around me and all that was happening for weeks.
Then it hit me like a Tsunami, how was she still standing? How much longer will she be able before she breaks. Seeing the rawness of her love for us, for me. The pureness of no agenda, just unadulterated love and arms stronger than any I had ever known holding my world around me. Those arms held me together.
It was my love for her that brought me out of my darkness long enough to see her need to hold Todd and I together even if it killed her. It was my love for her that sent her for a rest bite, that required her to care for herself, to honor her need to grieve as well, assuring her we would be okay.
Gratefully in all of this darkness a love blossomed ever so gently with the same man that had sent her crash landing on our door step.
The more she knew she was lovable, the more she loved herself, opening herself to receiving this love from and for the man who had hurt her, who had removed her footings and laid her in Todds and my loving arms. Allowing a safe place for her grief that transformed her through her shadows into forgiveness of herself and this wonderful man who had been broken by the loss of her.
Setting herself and this man free of the nightmare they had both created. Forgiveness and love eased guilt and shame, erasing regret and creating a place to start for these two loving people. They blossomed in the newness of this place. Shredding expectations and slowly trusting themselves to no longer allow their own shadows to destroy the gift they are to each other.
Through this all the universe reveled a relationship between sisters, between our children we had only ever heard bits and pieces about. As much as we had dreamed of the possibility, our dreams could never have stretched to the depths of the relationship that we have grown into.
Slowly trust and love erased our culture and gave each of us something beyond our imagination. As we were challenged to step out of the loss so that we could see the gift as we acknowledged we would have never chosen the loss that brought us the gift of each other.
I feel torn by the magnitude of the loss and the magnitude of the gift.
Still unable to step out of the loss enough to embrace the gift.
Awareness of it is a start, each moment can only be what it is, I can not commit to ever being able to embrace the gift.
Just as I can not commit to ever integrating the loss, all I can do is take in each breath and exhale regardless of how painful it is.
To get up each day regardless of how hard it is to be here.
I am still here.
Thank you dear sister.
Comments