I remember watching the movie Australia. One thing that stood out was that when someone died you were forbidden to say their name. Two months ago, my sister died, and I’ve had to consider that life isn’t permanent. I’ve learned the ways in which people grieve. I am a person who doesn’t find comfort visiting the cemetery. I tell myself only the shell of the person is there – their body – and to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. People, however, still go to the gravesite to talk to their departed loved one. For me, just pausing a moment, looking up or just speaking into the air in my bedroom, in the shower, or as I prepare a meal, expressing what I want to say to my loved
one, is all I need.
I have learned, however, that grief is different for different people, how one deals with loss, and expresses that loss varies. Thank God for my time as a facilitator of grieving children groups at a local community hospital. I learned that grief doesn’t come in a one-size-fits-all package, and I respect the different ways, even members of the same family, express sadness and grief.
I remember when my parents brought Pauline home and put her crib at the foot of my oldest sister, Pat’s bed, moving Roberta and I to the sofa sleeper in the dining room. That was over 50 years ago. However, I don’t ever remember thinking the youngest of the four of us would be the first one to go. We nicked named Pauline Bug, after the cartoon character LuLu Bug, who was always in and out of trouble but mostly in. In many ways that described Bug: she was a fighter, had a spicy personality and was always up to the task of telling you like it was or alternately cooking you a delicious homemade meal.
We talked about life not being permanent, still, many of us cling to immortality somewhere in our hearts. Nevertheless, when are you ever really prepared to say a final goodbye? Watching Bug cling to life, I continued to cling to hope and to faith, that said she would put the pain and sickness behind her and be with us a lot longer; and at least as long as it would take to watch her daughter Sydne walk down the aisle to receive her bachelor’s degree and to pledge her I do’s. I thought she would be here long enough to shake a grand-baby or two, so that we could grow gray together. She had defied two other bouts with breast cancer, a mastectomy, chemo therapy, baldness, ports, blood transfusion- I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that her warrior spirit would not be able to handle the cancer invading her body that had resurrected itself again from remission.
Unlike the movie, Australia, when I feel an urge to talk to Pauline, I speak her name. When my heart spills over and I have a bit of sisterly conversation to share, helps. So, I stop, get in a stance, and pour a little would-you-believe-this-or-that Bug, from my heart. And there’s the part of me, the core of me that feels her presence and knows I have her sisterly ear. She’s listening.