Still Here

This morning I woke at 6 am just as the sun was starting to rise. With everything that is happening in the world we've been staying up late and sleeping in so I laid in bed for awhile thinking I would fall back to sleep, but just couldn't. I've really needed a release as day 20 of shelter-in-place begins. It's hard to explain, but this new normal just isn't normal at all and I've been holding in so much trying to navigate it and be strong. I wasn't quite sure what to do, so I made a cup of coffee, sat down at the computer in the empty, quiet, and dimly lit house and decided that I really needed some sister time. It has been almost seven years since my best friend and older sister Crystal died. And in the years leading up to her passing, she wrote a blog similar to this one. I've looked at it from time to time, and usually could not get more than ten minutes in without completely losing it. But this morning, in this moment, I needed to hear from her. I started reading and kept going, and kept going after that, until I got all the way to the beginning. Her nearly four years of journaling was like hearing directly from her, in her own words. Often a photo would support a post and I closed my eyes to try to place myself there with her. Her love letter to her daughter, my niece Rilynn, on her ninth birthday made me realize that my own baby, the one she posted about coming to see and hold who was born one day before her thirtieth birthday, will be nine in one month! There was a post and a photo from her trip to Chicago with just her and I as we started navigating divorce together in the midst of her terrible cancer journey. I wept. And wept. She loved so hard. She fought so hard. She LIVED so hard. Once she heard that she would likely die, she traveled. To Costa Rica. And Hawaii. And Mexico. And St. Martin. And Miami. And California. She found new love. She cherished moments with her loved ones. As she would probably say, "I rallied." There were surprises too. She went and visited our paternal grandmother and her girls met their Great Grandma. I didn't know that happened; or if I did I must've forgotten again. On two of her trips to visit me in California she mentioned what she was doing while "I worked." Man, oh man. If I could go back in time, I would've quit every single one of those jobs to have a millisecond more with her. She flew to see me and I still went to work while she was there? She said things to describe the smell of the sea, her view from an airplane, the despair she felt as her body fought against her. For a moment, it was like she was still here. And it was magnificent! Life is chaotic right now. We are all doing the absolute best we can. My clinical work with clients is all virtual now, but it is a constant reminder to me that we are in this together. Each experience is unique and valid and important. I would encourage you all to spend even a few seconds this weekend finding some type of self-care, whether that be a trip back in time to "visit" with someone like I did, a Skype visit in the here and now with someone you've been missing, or start planning a trip for the future (while airfare and travel is so inexpensive). As I went to post this, a Facebook memory crawled to the top of my screen. Wouldn't you know, she was here all morning and I didn't even know it!