Tonight I decided to put my I-pod on shuffle a I wrote and this was the first song that started to play:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMPIxEWGs5g
It was one of the songs that we played for my dad in his last hours. We needed to feel some comfort and music was always such a huge part of his life so we felt like he would appreciate hearing some of his favorites. It is now the ringtone for when my mom calls me so I will forever be reminded of my dad’s love. Open another window and listen to it as you read the next part of my falling apart. But before I do thank you for all the kind words of encouragement and confidence that you have in me. It’s your words that kept me writing and working through this. <3
Its that surreal moment. The one that you can literally hear your brain try to process what it has just heard. I am in the middle of
a noisy movie theater hall and I can hear my heart just stop. I’m pretty sure that I sat just right in the middle of the hall; and then
realized that I sat in the middle of a hall and scooted towards a wall. There was just faint crying coming from the other end of the phone. And I had not yet caught up to what I was just told. For a split second I actually had the thought that this was just another one of her little schemes, but the authenticity of my sister’s reaction proved it to be wrong.
You know that saying that in certain situations you will either act or react? Well that was this time. I had to act. My sister was dead, I didn’t know how, I didn’t know when, my other sister was crying on the phone with me and I had ignored the other 3 for the better part of 2 hours. “What happened?” I know it wasn’t the first thing that I said to her on the phone, but it was the first thing I remember saying. She tearfully explained that she and her boyfriend were out on a four wheeler ride and she didn’t know
the whole story but they crashed and she died. I remember this sister saying “I don’t know what the hell, I have (baby-sister’s little girl) here and I don’t know what to do.”
There was panic, there was devastation, there was pleading through the tears. I acted. “What can I do? What do you need from me?” clearly, she was overwhelmed, she was begging for help. “I need to get a hold of (the 2 dads). Mom won’t pick up her phone and I just can’t tell anyone else right now. What should I do with (Baby sister’s daughter)?” “I’ll call the dads. Keep (Baby Sisters daughter) there but don’t tell her anything yet. I will get in touch with the dad first.
I hung up the phone and my mind went blank. I texted Kevin who was still in the movie theater. I knew it was a long shot, but I was hoping maybe he would come out and see what was wrong. Then I realized I had no phone number to reach dad number one. The only conversations that we ever had were on Facebook, so I hoped that maybe he had a smart phone and would get the message if I sent one. I simply wrote call me immediately and left him my cell number. Then I tried to call my friend who was sister’s to the other dad. No answer. But in that moment, my phone rang- a number I didn’t know. It was dad #1. I told him as kindly as I could and both of us expressed shock and concern for his son. We both exchanged “if you need anything call me” and hung up. Then I tried the friend again, no answer. Very unlike her. The movie theater, where Kevin and the kids were, started to empty so I walked against the crowd in hopes that I would find the faces I knew. They hadn’t even left their seat yet but I noticed Kevin looking at his phone. The movie theaters aren’t kidding when they say that a tiny bright screen in a dark theater can be very distracting. The theater was still pretty dark, but I could see the expression on his face; disbelief. He noticed me and gathered the kids and headed down the stairs. His brother and his wife were there and were kind and offered whatever comfort they could, but I didn’t need comfort at that point, I still didn’t really believe it yet.
When my dad died the year before that, my sisters and I were all in the room with him in the last hours of his life. We all crashed on the floor and tried to get some sleep through out that night, but none of us wanted to leave him. In the end, we were all gathered around him on his bed and watched him take his last breaths, it was a relief from pain for him. He had lung cancer that had spread rapidly and relentlessly all over his body and was given 6 months. He made it three, but all of us were grateful to have those three months.It was time to process, to make things right, to say goodbye. Baby Sister’s death was unexpected and untimely and cruel. She wasn’t ready to go. We weren’t ready for her to go. This was a different experience all together.
She lived life on the edge; she mocked rules and lived life with no cares. She thought she was invincible, she thought she was only hurting herself with her actions. And she wasentirely wrong. She died and two wonderful children were without a mother now. She died and 5 sisters are without her now. She died and our mother is burying her child now. She died and many, many people were without her friendship now. Her choices affected so much more than her and it was such a painful reality for every one of us to live with.
Kevin and I packed up our kids and started to drive home. I grabbed his phone from him, because he had my friend’s husband’s phone number on it and I was hoping to get a hold of her through him so the other father would know. It was a long shot if my friend wasn’t picking up, but I was trying every angle. He picked up. I asked for my friend and he seemed confused. “(Friend), (Baby Sister) was killed in an ATV accident.” It was shock and disbelief. She thought the same thing I did. Is this a trick? Another scheme? I assured her a few times and told her I needed her to call her brother and tell him. I explained that his daughter was with my other sister and she didn’t know yet, we were waiting to tell him. We hung up and then she went on to tell her entire family.
We got home and things started to settle in. It was late and I was tired but I could not sleep. I was so disturbed by this news and I felt it was wrong to just go to sleep like any other night. I got up and messaged a few family members that lived far away and friends of hers that I knew. I couldn’t sleep no matter how hard I tried. My mind simply would not turn off. It wasn’t right. This shouldn’t have happened.
I finally fell asleep, probably for only a few hours at best and then got out of bed and went about my day. It was a Sunday and it was my mom’s birthday. What a horrible twist to this story. I still didn’t know if she even knew about Baby Sister. I waited a few hours, selfishly, because I really didn’t want to get on the phone and hear the complete heartbreak from my mom. I couldn’t stand hearing that from her. It was a painful long conversation and I had no comfort to offer her. There is nothing that can be said to a mother who just lost her child, it is a pain that has no comfort. She told me that she and my other sisters were going to the morgue to identify her that morning and asked if I wanted to go. I politely declined and said that they can go if that is what will help them, but seeing her body was not going to do anything for me. On top of that, my sisters and I were still on the rocks.
I knew that my presence would not be welcomed among them, so I let them have that moment. I stayed home and tried to listen to listen to any conference message that I could pay attention to, but I didn’t have the ability to focus on anything enough to retain anything. It was just a distraction for the pain. I talked with my grandparents that day. They called to tell me how sad they was and how sorry they was that we had to go through another death so shortly after my father died. They said a few things to me that were exactly what I needed to hear in that moment. They knew me. They knew what my heart needed to hear. They were what I needed in that moment. I will forever be grateful for the kind words that they shared with me and for the honesty that I knew they always had.
As horrible as this sounds, I was more mad than anything else, for an entirely selfish reason: She made up so many lies about me and no one will ever know the truth. I lost sisters to her lies, lost friends to her lies; I lost my reputation to her lies. She ruined me and then died and it will never be made right. How could she do that? I hated her for it. I hated my baby sister for the mistakes that she made, and the mistakes that she made ended up killing her. How could I be mad at her? She ended up paying the ultimate price for her actions. She won’t get to see her kids grow up, she won’t experience a kiss from her sweet daughter or a bear hug from her kind son. She knows the price she paid. She lost everything. And yet I was still mad. Furious.
So mad that I didn’t shed one single tear for her. I let that anger grow into bitterness.
It consumed me for the better part of a week. Some moments were better than others. Some were much worse. I would hear little bits of information from my mom or friends and the fury fire would grow. I was having a hard time even keeping enough energy from the anger to take care of my kids. I think it was a few days after she died that I decided I needed to something to defuse. So I packed up Kenaley and went for a walk. It was getting close to the time that my kids were getting done with school so I decided to take the long 1 mile walk up a steep hill to go get them. And on the way there I stopped to get a Pepsi, because it’s always good to feed anger caffeine. I had an hour to get up there, it took me about 15 minutes. So I made laps around the school while I waited. It helped. Probably just because I was so exhausted from walking (don’t forget I was also about 8 weeks pregnant and nausea was well into play here) I got home and just sat around for the night. I had talked on and off with my mom about plans for her funeral but until that point things were not set in stone. One of my sisters had a business trip that she had to take to Europe for a few weeks and needed to leave early in that week. So it sounded like the funeral was going to wait until she got back and would be kept small and intimate.
One particular morning that week was exceptionally hard. It was around 8:30. I was up because I had to go and give an assembly to the 5th grade at Logan’s school about being an author. His teacher asked in at the beginning of the year if we had a job that we would be willing to teach their class about and when I told her that I didn’t work, but I had a published book, she was really excited and asked me to talk to the entire 5th grade about it. This was the morning that I we were doing it. I got a call from my mom, she told me that they were having a private viewing for Baby Sister that morning at 9 in Salt Lake before she was to be
creamated. In one hour. I was in disbelief. I paused for a minute, so hurt that I was a forgotten detail to this event and muttered out “well, I can’t…” that’s about all I had gotten out before I was interrupted by her saying “Its okay. If you can’t come its fine.” And then she hurried off the phone and went on her way. This was the pinnacle of my fury. I felt so unwelcome, so unwanted, so forgotten. I blamed Baby Sister. In that moment I thought, well, you got what you wanted they dismissed me like just another person on the street. I was left so hurt by what Baby Sister had done before she died and I felt like this was her final little zing. I pictured her bragging: “Ha-ha. They forgot to invite you to my funeral. You are nothing to them.” I was crushed. I broke. I threw my phone and turned the hurt into rage and went on a rampage. Screaming and throwing things and making a big scene. Kevin calmed me down and told me that he thinks we need to go to the temple. I told him there was no way I could walk through those doors right now and he told me to get there by 5 that night. Clearly, he knew what I needed. I pulled myself together, went and did the assembly without any problems and then came home to a good friend who had her stroller loaded with her 2 little ones and was ready to go walk it off with me. She had gone to the viewing and brought back with her a picture that my somewhat level headed sister wanted me to have. My friend told me that Sister had handed it to her and simply said give this to Danyelle. Nothing else. I was angry and threw it aside without even looking much at it. We walked and I vented and cursed and probably scared the begeezers out of my friend, she had never seen that side of me before. She was kind and understanding and just listened to me and showed that she loved and supported me freaking out to her. I will forever be thankful for that walk with her. I got home and in my exhaustion decided that what I needed was space. I sat with my laptop and wrote a short and to the point email to my sisters and my mom and told them that I needed to have some space. Told them that of all the hurtful things that Baby Sister had done, being a forgotten detail to her funeral plans was the most hurtful thing of all. I told them that I already felt so unwanted and so unwelcome to that event and to have been forgotten was a worse feeling than that. I told them that I would appreciate to be left alone so I could overcome this. I got a few replies, one very heartfelt apology from my mother and several others that were not so heartfelt and not apologies at all. After reading my mom’s reply and a few events that followed, I honestly think that with all the things that my mom had to plan, she really did just overlook inviting me to the viewing. It was planned very quickly and she tough that surely one of my sisters had told me. It has been forgotten between my mom and I.
My grandmother called me again that day. She was sad that I wasn’t there. She knew little about the drama between baby Sister and I and how my other sisters were carrying on her work. She expressed to me that she was upset about one sister telling everyone that she was baby Sister’s mom and she had practically raised her. My grandmother told me that she followed behind her in her walker and set them straight, she told them that baby Sister was MY baby.That I would carry her on my hip and that Baby Sister knew me as her second mother. She was angry at my sister for taking that credit. She said it broke he heart to think that I was so devastated that I couldn’t even come. When I informed her that everyone forgot to invite me, a rage in her that I had never seen before was heard through the phone. She was hurt just as much as I was and tried we both comforted each other in a way that is a private and cherished memory. My grandmothers voice and reassuring words was what I needed
to feel calm enough to make it through the rest of the day.
That night I went to the temple with Kevin. I so badly wanted to feel Baby Sister’s presence there or just to have a feeling of
peace. But, it was just like any other trip to the temple. It felt good to go, but it wasn’t what I was hoping to feel that night.
I’m going to stop for the night. Mostly because my husband is getting irritated that for 2 nights now I have done nothing but type. And partly because My good friend was right. "Writing will bring the emotions to the surface but it will also allow you to draw them out of your head and give them a place for you to reflect.” I think I have surfaced enough for the night.
I find it no coincidence that this is what is playing on my I-pod as I finish tonight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpcBjt8Wqg8
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