I don't know if I'll post this one.
I've been terribly unhappy with how I've been treating my blog lately. I hate it. But I can't write. I can't make myself do anything. It just comes out as garbage. Useless splooge. Just garbage about my feelings for people, my emotions. All of which come to naught. I feel silly even talking in this blog anymore because so many people read it. There are so many expectations now to make an entry, to say the right thing, to say something profound, to not just spill my guts on this page because it's embarrassing. Because it's personal and I shouldn't be telling anyone any of these things. And yet, here I am. I have a few things to say.
I almost lost my sister tonight. I have one sister. Just one. One full blood sibling in the entire world. That's what God gave me. There are no replacement sisters, no others. It's like we were two halves born at a different time. And now we make a whole. Sure we're not perfect. There are a lot of things about her that I can't stand. There are a lot of things that she does that grates on my every nerve. I'm sure who I am is not pleasing to her at all times. But we wouldn't be human if we didn't disagree at times.
Everyone tells Lanie and I that we are twins. It's not like looking into a mirror but it's similar. Same face structure, same color eyes, same skin color, our eyes are shaped differently, and we wear our hair differently, but we generally have the same shape and size. If I was to be honest there are times when I felt like she was all I needed. If I didn't ever have any friends, if God never blessed me with Nicole, Ashley, Delilah, Cassi.....she would have been enough. We're different in personality. Lanie is the social one. She puts herself out there. She grabs her life by the balls and parties up. That's how it goes with Lanie. Lanie wants something Lanie seizes it and she wrestles it to the floor and tames it until it is hers. She is the extrovert. She is the sun. I am the quiet one. The contemplative one. I am funny and social in my own way, but I am not one to surround myself with a lot of people. I am thoughtful and I'm the advice giver. I'm the one that sees things from a distance and observes and records. I am the introvert. I am the moon. And Lanie and I have the same relationship as the sun and the moon. We take turns phasing in and out, one being more powerful than the other and then switching places. Night and day.
And how does the night go on without the day? How does it achieve balance or survive? It doesn't. Like a missing half, the night goes dormant and does not happen. It does not come. The moon does not shine without the sun. That's how it works. When I got the call from her, she sounded like she was going to cry. Her opening words were, "Katie, I love you." And my immediate thought was that something had happened with her friends or her ex-boyfriends or something of that nature. I was ready to comfort. But I wasn't prepared for her to tell me that she almost died tonight. I wasn't ready for that bomb. In fact...I didn't feel the impact of it until after she had hung up the phone. "How?" was all I could say. She told me the story of how she was driving home from her friend's house and a dog had ran out in front of her car. The road she was traveling was one of Louisiana's many dark, forested back highways. She swerved to avoid the animal, fish-tailed into the ditch, missed a bumper and and gasline by inches. If she would have hit the bumper she would have crashed and died on impact. If she had hit the gasline, her car would have exploded. But there was our car....our little black Lexus that we share parallel parked in between that gasline and bumper. And then she told me that she saw Angelle.
Angelle is Lanie's friend that passed a few weeks ago. October 1st. She died the same way. In an automobile accident. I credit God for everything. I credit Him for the fact that she is safe and only her foot is messed up. But I credit Angelle too for stopping that car. Lanie said, "it was as if she took the wheel from me and parallel parked that thing in the ditch." It was so perfectly parked. No scratches to it. Nothing. It was as if it had just killed and came to a perfect dead stop. Lanie said she remembers getting out of the car, her foot all bloodied up, and seeing something flying around that wasn't unlike a butterfly. If you've read my previous entry about the butterflies, you'll know why this is important. The butterfly is what Lanie and her friends liken Angelle to. The butterfly has become like the physical manifestation of Angelle since she died.
This is why I chose this title. Granted, it's appropriate for this Halloween week but it says something else. It says that the dead never really die. And....I just have to say some things that might offend some people. That might conflict with some people's beliefs but I honestly don't care. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't know how atheists do it. How they just....believe in nothing but what we are today and now. How they can comfortably say, "I'm going to die and that's the end" and be done with it. Then please....if you will..answer me this one question. Why are we here then? What is the point of you even taking that next breath? If there is nothing after death then what's the point? And...if that is what you truly believe then you are doing yourself a huge disservice. You aren't giving yourself enough credit.
Human beings are superior creatures. Look at yourself in the mirror and as much as you might not like what you see, just sit in my biology class for a little while and learn about everything that makes your body work. Every little piece, every little reaction that keeps you alive, everything that makes you who you are. It's a downright piece of art. Whether or not you believe that you live up to societies standards as gorgeous or desirable, you're still....amazing. And when someone dies it shakes the world. It starts a ripple that affects people. When a person dies...it's a big deal. And so to say that...this...amazing thing doesn't live on would be silly. Would be ridiculous.
I'm not afraid of death. I never have been. Surely I want to live. Surely I want to take my next breath, but death and I have tangoed before, 3 times to be exact and each time I came out on top. I'm not afraid of it. What I'm afraid of is the loss. The having to live without. The empty. The sadness. The grief. Loss hasn't really paid me a good visit yet. I've never lost anyone close to me. I've never been through that. But I tend to view death as not an ending but a transition. Death isn't an ending. It isn't the end of the story. It's not like, "here's 80 years and that's all she wrote". I can't explain to you why I know this. I just do. I've had too many run-ins, too much evidence in my life that proves that it's not the end. Death is a transition into something greater. We can't imagine that I know. We as humans believe that we're the greatest thing since canned beer. We can build spaceships, we can destroy other people's countries, we can make robots do things for us, we can write literature and create artworks, we can cooks delicious foods and do just about anything that we really want to. So naturally we are the greatest thing in the world. Right? No I really don't think so. We have this ability to become something greater. To shed our bodies and to become these beings that exist in....well God only knows where.
I don't believe in heaven as a gated community with a passcode at the front. You don't like..dial some numbers on a keypad and God swipes his card and opens the gate for you if you have all the right things going for you. These seems to be the common depiction of heaven. I don't see it that way. I believe the dead are active in our lives. They whisper things into your ear, they squeeze your hand when you are sad, they laugh with you, and they cry with you, and they stop moving vehicles from crashing. Heaven is only a state of being. It's the state of being free. Without boundaries. Without hindrances. Heaven is just that. Being one with God and being free from bodily and earthly constraints. It is only after death that you have the ability to do anything you could ever want. And yet....somehow you don't have the desire to do so. Because everything you'd ever want is there and with you all at the same time. It is light. It is peace. It is calm and freedom and the most inexplicable bliss you could ever feel. Dying makes you more alive and real than you've ever felt in your life.
I don't cry at funerals. People look at me like I have something wrong with me but I just don't. I can't be sad for someone who is free of pain and free of any earthly hurt. I don't find them lucky. I certainly wouldn't smile at a funeral. But it is something that I've been looking forward to. I'm not saying that if my sister had died tonight I wouldn't be completely besides myself. I'm not saying that it wouldn't take me years to learn to live without her. I'm human. And that's only second best. But I need to give the biggest thank you to a little girl that I never knew for saving my sister. God sent you there to be with her I know.
For those who are wondering Lanie is fine. Her left foot has a few cuts on it, she's feeling the impact a little bit. The car had little to no damage and she is asleep and ready to drive to work the next few days. Within a few hours of the accident she had called me and was joking about the whole thing. She was making funny accents on the phone and trying to make me laugh. That's her. Nothing can block out the sun.
For those of my friends that are suffering with loss....please remember that. Nothing can block out the sun.
End Day 64
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