Posted: Oct 10, 08 10:40am
I learned by phone less than thirty minutes ago that my sister died. She was three years younger than I am and just turned 49. She lived in Oregon on a farm precisely the way she wanted to live. Her husband is a retired Los Angeles Fire Department Paramedic. She raised two children, a boy and a girl who are both in college. The boy wants to follow my example and enter the Navy's special warfare program as an officer. I've tried to dissuade him.
Grief is selfish. I wonder if it is the most selfish of emotions. I want my sister not for the sake of her husband or children who need her, but for myself. I will miss her privately. I traditionally call her just to say hello but that won't happen anymore and I selfishly feel anger because she won't be there to answer the phone.
You share a context with siblings that nobody else shares. You can speak of life, of this or that event because they were shared through youth and through adult life as well. That context is now gone and I am selfishly angry that "I" have lost it.
Grief is not a pleasant emotional process. It's one of those self-serving things that I've tried to erase in the past, but it didn't work then any better than it's working now.
Writing my thoughts to anonymous people is easier than expressing them any other way at the moment. Grief is a very private thing for me but sharing it this way - to strangers - keeps it private while at the same time bleeding the steam out of the check-valve.
If you read this, call the people you care about and tell them that you love them. That's all.
