Well, you did and it can't be undone.  Your sister understood that you didn't say it to be cruel or hurtful.  You are just eternally realistic. I once had the unenviable duty of explaining to a room full of people that included my paternal grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and my father why his younger brother should be taken off of life support.  Only my dad and grandparents got it the first time around. The more times that I had to explain the more clinical and detached I became and this particular uncle and I were extremely close to each other.  At times like this I take solace from a line in an old Negro spiritual that goes, "I'm so glad troubles don't last always."

I'm sorry for you and your family's lost.  Your family needs everything you can afford to give them right now.

Well man, as the old saying goes: To err is human, to forgive divine...

Hard as hell to be divine sometimes but you said you and your sister are close.  The divinity will be there. 

My condolences to you and your family's loss.

 

Just thought I would let you know that I am praying for your family. If you feel like you need to be a bit more emotional, pray about it. God is a emotional God and we are made in His image - making us emotional as well. I understand though, we had to decide as a family with my grandmother - to leave her on or take her off. The answer was obvious, take her off, but was hard to accept. Feels strange knowing your decision takes the life out of your niece. Or another way to look at it, feels strange knowing the final decision will set your niece's spirt free.

May Jesus meet you and your family's needs.

Very sorry E. - these moments of family distress are always difficult.

Anonymous, well written.

My Condolences to you and your family during this difficult time.

Being the family stoic can be a good thing sometimes; does the family really need another hand-wringer and tearful hysteric?  Swallowing one's emotions, if it comes naturally, is fine--at least until you finally come to grips with reconciling yourself to the loss of your niece, and the pain it is causing your family.  If that don't make you wanna holla, you're no stoic--you're made of stone.  Remember :  Grieving is essential and inevitable; how you do it is up to you.

I wish you and your family comfort and peace. 

Your stoicism is for our benefit, isn't it?

Hey bruh, you know where I live and how we do. When you feel like, come on down...let's break some bread and let some tears flow. I feel you and wish you all the best. One love.

Might do that. I got technology to reconcile today...that's therapy sometimes. But I been meaning to get back around your way anyway.

I've decided to take this opportunity to say some things about myself...context rarely brings me, personally, into the discussion.

I'm not looking to become more emotional...I'm not so much made of stone as interlocking crystals attached by that gooey touchy-feely stuff. I USED TO BE made of stone. Sis was the once that just kept after me until I saw how it impacted people. She's fully equipped on the rational tip...not hyper-rational like me but more than capable of getting her point across.

And my oldest niece is actually right there with me, as far as being relentlessly direct...she just has the advantage of being stunning. In fact, we are in general not a family of hand-wringers.

But.

I've lost a baby brother to a car accident, two sisters to illness added to stress and now a niece I've been looking out for. And my father is really ill...he's had multiple strokes, multiple coronary bypasses, has no kidney function and I was just informed he has gangrene in his feet. He was hospitalized the same day I heard about my niece passing.

Pop's been through a lot, is going through a lot. And I've been steeling myself for the inevitable end. That's shaped my reactions here to a large degree.

My job in these situations it to say and do the real things. And I always wind up talking to folks about the issues that arise in their hearts and minds as a result of the death. Mostly I just have to shut up and listen. Brother in law is mad cool, but some of the stuff that came up made me listen real close. I wound up still feeling he's cool and he got some stuff off.

Later, I handle mine.

You know, emotional response to major events can signify in such different ways to different people. Example:  I think you are seeking, and will continue to seek, meaning in the lives of those who are close to you.  As long as the meaning is there, then death does not destroy the life of a person, but merely impose obvious time limits on the experiences of the person dying.  Because our experiences no longer overlap with that person's, does not mean hers has vanished.  On some basic level, and in perhaps in different words, you understand this. 

I sense that you would not be the sort of person to shield yourself from anguish by advertising it, or by trying to convince yourself of any manner of balderdash.  What would set you off would be an utter waste, either of suffering (yes, suffering can be wasted and is indeed one of the most wasted things there is), or of the things necessary for flourishing.  This, not death, is a tragedy (since we already know that we are going to die).

Yeah, pain always gets a reaction from me. I prefer to say "pain" rather than suffering because some might say suffering is all in your head. Pain is directly real, including that aspect of it that is an element of suffering.

Intentionally inflicted pain gets me angry. Existential pain is a teacher, or a goad to action.

The first death was my baby brother Alfred. I was 13, he was four, and he was the first person I ever admitted out loud I loved (Greg, the brother immediately following me, we were close to the point that no one ever said our names individually...we never spoke of our connection).  We had just moved into this house, been there a month and a half or so. Three sisters older than I, one sister and three brothers younger...we older ones (from Greg up) took turns watching him while he were outside.

My turn. Memorial Day. I'm doing something, tell folks I'll be out in ten minutes. I was on the way out the door when I heard brakes screech. Alfred had this little flying saucer gun and ran into the street after the disk. He was struck by a car.

I linked this yesterday because it proves I'm not weird. I like it when I find proof I'm not weird.

I pushed through the circle of folks...everyone on the block had come out. He was lying there, a pool of blood under his head. Murmur, murmur, is he okay? I watched myself kneel next to him, put my hand on his chest. I said, "He's not breathing, I can't feel his heart. I thnk he's dead." Sister above me, Jean (who taught me to read at four years old, almost as a game) shouted "Don't say that!" but of course it was true. He never felt a thing. Neither did I for quite a while.

But two months after the funeral, sitting in my back yard, I cracked. I cried spontaneously for another two months or so. Eventually I pulled it it, but I lost faith. My mom has been saved since long before it was a topic of public conversation. I was tracking myself to be a minister. But no one could give me an anwser to the basic question we all have...why?  The standard line, "You don't know, God probably save him from a life of grief, he might have been a junkie (which was actually said, which I found insulting), and I was like, "Then let Him fix it! Why did He even make him if that was going to be his life, if He was just going to take him, when He knew I would hurt like this?

And I still can't shake the belief I could have stopped him, that Afred would be alive but for that ten minute delay.

Next year. Memorial Day. We were going to a store, half hour walk, to buy our bathing suits for the swimming pool season. We run into an uncle, about whom we were missing two critial pieces of information:

1. He was manic-depressive (yeah the crazy uncle that lives over the garage)
2. He was off his meds

We thought he was just showing up for a visit. He asked where we lived, and we told him. He said something disturbing we didn't understand. We went on to get our bathing suits. He went on to our house with the intention of killing every female relative he had.

He stabbed my mother in the heart, my sister Jean in the back. They got away by going out a second floor window onto the kitchen roof and jumping down a story as two male cousins who were there held uncle back. Mom told me years later of her prayer..."God don't let me die, I still have children to raise," and the bleeding stopped. The surgeons said she never should have made it to them.

Uncle was caught, Jean and Mom survived. I have less faith than ever, though I don't know how I would have reacted if I knew about that prayer. And oh, yeah...puberty. I am a seriously confused person at this point. I had to come to terms with a lot of emotion, and the only tool I had that I still trusted was my intellect.

I started meditation with serious intent. I did a deep analysis, watched myself. Being an introvert by nature I was my own input anyway. I came to understand emotion not as the thrill you feel as you shift states but as the actual state so attained...fixation = the idea that give the emotion its shape, agitation = physical energy required to deal with the fixation. Modeled it on fear.

I can handle emotion perceived this way. But it means I don't usually give off the signs folks associate with any given emotional state. It means sometimes people will feel a void in me as I'm dealing with a crisis.

As for the faith thing, obviously I have a lot of reason to respect that, but I found my wholeness outside that process,

You know the way...jes lemme know when you're comin'.