I read a quote last night that really made me think. It was talking about he hole left after an organ is removed and how the body fills in the gap. Blood and fluid fill the space and tissue builds. The book was referencing how this is the same as loosing a family member. The gap is painful, seems insurmountable, and then the body forces something else into the empty space.
After my rib was taken out just touching the skin on my chest was extremely painful. Like couldn't even wear a delicate silver chain kind of painful. The space under my skin where the newly missing rib was soft, not at all solid and strong like it had once been. But over the course of the next year my body filled in the space. My chest wall again became hard, no gap is noticeable. I can only see where the rib is missing during workouts when doing a few exercises.
This is a lot like loosing a family member. Unfortunately we've had two huge losses for my family this year. First Brad's sweet grandmother, then last month my Aunt Marsha. While Brad's grandmother had lived a long full life, my Aunt Marsha was struck down in the prime of hers with liver cancer. Over the past few weeks since her funeral my mind has been struggling to right itself and fill in the void.
I look at her picture often so I can remember how she really looked, not how I saw her in the last days of her life. Frail and small, ravaged by an evil disease is not how I want to remember her. I want to remember her grinning devilishly over a hand of cards, laughing while she played a wild Canasta and ticked off the men's team. I want to remember her driving me to school every day of my childhood. She would drive the station wagon while eating a sandwich in the most irritating way, circularly until all that was left was a small quarter sized bite. Who does that? I want to remember the way she helped with everything at my wedding. With very little notice or planning my parents threw together a great wedding, and she was there helping every step of the way. I want to remember how much she loved my kids and was always so happy to see them. Every time we came home for a visit, with in five minutes of walking through my parents' door I would hear Aunt Marsha and Uncle Larry pull up on their Ranger, ready to hug me and the kids.
My family is small, my mother is an only child and my dad has two brothers. I technically have two aunts. One I saw a little bit when I was very small but then they moved and very seldom attended any family functions. So much so that she didn't know who I was when I saw her at the hospital when my grandmother was dieing. My Aunt Marsha on the other hand lived next door, drove me to school every day til I was old enough to drive myself. She and my Uncle Larry brought us swimming to the creek many times every summer. We camped at our favorite state park with our families RVs next to each other every year. While camping we ate dinner together every night and then would get into very heated card game, Rook or Canasta, and finish the night with a very loud game of Mexican train. Some of my happiest memories are at Percy Quin park around a camp table.
Since I haven't lived "at home" in over a decade aunt Marsha's loss won't be the same for me as it will for everyone at home. I won't see her presence being missed in every day life. I won't notice the empty pew at church every week where she usually sat. But I feel her loss just as powerfully. She was such a huge part of my childhood. As an adult I loved her as my friend. We still played cards every visit home and she loved to enrage my husband when the ladies team won. Sweetness loved Aunt Marsha too. They had a funny relationship. He picked on her relentlessly and she loved to irritate him. I always said he could smell the "mother of boys" smell on her.
Seeing her tiny and frail yet keeping her optimism was a testament to what an awesome person she was. The last time I hugged her she was so small, and she had never before been tiny in my mind. But now she is no longer frail or sick,no longer weak and strong and whole is how I am choosing to remember her. I can still see the gleam in her eye when she played cards. I still see the smile on her face when she hugged my babies and treated them like her own grandchildren.
I am so blessed to have had such an awesome lady as my Aunt, my neighbor, and my friend.
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