Me with Nikki, Thanksgiving Day 2008
Well, despite having a wonderful year, a healthy pregnancy, a new home to call our very own, an amazing husband and family, and pretty much everything else being great, too, I was mentally preparing for something awful to happen. Not expecting it to happen, because I’m no pessimist, but it seems to me that God allows bad things to happen when everything else is great to enable us to better be able to handle them.
So last Monday, I got a phone call from Dad. My cousin, who is nine days older than me and basically the sister I never had, had endured a few tumultuous weeks. They proved to be too much for her to bear. She suffered from bipolar disorder, which I hate to admit that I know very little about. What I do know is that in the end, that was her death sentence. Her funeral was Friday. Up until Friday, I tried to keep reminding myself that she was gone. It just didn’t seem possible. We went to the funeral home on Thursday evening so see family and to, well, get a dose of reality. I stepped inside the funeral home doors, and that was as far as I could go. Luckily her husband was right there, so we stood there and talked to him for about fifteen minutes or so. I kept glancing down the hall where I knew I would eventually have to go, but I was putting it off as long as I could. After all, at this point I was holding it together pretty well. On some level I knew I was going to break, but I’m stubborn and I didn’t want to give in.
Then I saw my other cousin, who is also my age (we were the Three Musketeers), start walking towards me. As soon as we got our arms around each other, I broke down. Hard. We stood there and hugged each other and cried for the longest time. I finally was able to start to pull myself together again (or so I thought), until I saw my aunt. That started another waterfall. After that I just let go of my pride and cried pretty much the whole time we were there. It felt good to finally let it out, although it still seemed so surreal. The funeral the next day was more of the same, but it helped me to start to understand that she is really gone.
Tomorrow is her son’s sixth birthday, then comes Christmas, then her husband’s birthday next week. My heart breaks for her husband, her kids, and her mom. My heart breaks for me, too, though. She will never meet my daughter. I will never hear her infectious laugh again. Or see her with her hand on her hip, head tilted, giving me a hard time for wearing heels when I’m eight months pregnant.
Here is the good in all of this. Last January, when my grandmother’s health was failing and we knew her days were short, several family members were spending a lot of time visiting Grandma and Grandpa. My cousin was one of those, as was my mom. She started asking my mom a lot of questions about her faith, and she decided to accept Christ. So knowing that she is no longer in pain, and that she is whole and complete and perfect…that makes me very happy. I will miss her terribly, but I know I will see her again someday.
