Dear Melynda,
Right now, I am at a place. A place you never got to visit. I get to learn things you never knew. I get to talk with people who teach me what is happening in and to my body. They make me feel seen. They make me feel not quite so scared when the panic takes over, and it feels as if the end is near. I get to know what you never did. The weight of the unfairness weighs heavily in my head and heart. Time seems to slow down and speed up all at the same breath. As thoughts of you cross my mind, it feels like yesterday that I hugged you close as I said goodbye, not knowing it would be the last time. At the same time, long agonizing years fall before my feet as I long for the days when I heard your voice at the end of the phone line. Aches flow and slow, up and down, again and again.
Missing you comes in daily pinches that seem sporadic or in sudden crashing moments that take my breath away. Your laugh rings daily in mine own, so every time I laugh, a pinch crosses my heart to remind me of our shared trait. Of all the times we would roll with laughter together. It was melodic and powerful, and I miss it.
Missing you comes when I reach for the phone, only to remember you won’t answer. All that waits for me is a voicemail message that haunts my mind: no advice to give, no stories to tell, just silence.
I miss sneaking food into movies. The full meals you could fit into your purse. Your own form of rebellion is hiding in there. I miss the crafts you would coerce me into, even though I loathed them. I did love the creativity you lit within me.
I miss raising my kids with you. I long for the days when we would sit around and watch them grow before our eyes. Loving each of them, regardless of who they actually belonged to.
I miss planning vacations and birthday parties with you. It seems you took the heart of our family when you left. We haven’t recovered, and we aren’t the same. Sometimes the pain of being together without you is too much, so we all stay away.
I miss the everyday stuff we would talk about, laugh about, and fight about because that is what you do with your person. You do realness. You do the highs and lows, you do it all because you know they will be there for you on the other side.
I miss when you would come stay after I had my babies. You would feed me good food, hold my new baby, love my kids, and encourage my husband. It was the closest I have come to being mothered, and it was better because it was you.
I missed my kids getting to know you. They have heard stories, but they can’t comprehend the unique and incredible person you are.
I miss being your sister. I felt privileged to be so and miss it.
There are some things that, as I have processed, I realize have become hard for me to look back on. As I grew from the young girl you would care for into a grown woman with a family of her own, it seemed hard for you to let me go. When I became a new mother, it was hard for you to let me trust my own judgment and make decisions for my kids. Your opinions and my view of parenting often conflicted, often making me question myself.
At times, it seemed like you and Chris were in a battle over who would control me more. The constant disappointment I felt, inwardly, at never meeting either of your expectations was a red herring I ignored. I hate that I allowed.
In my world of regret, a stream of anger swirls. I am so angry that you didn’t leave him. I am so angry that your love for him became more than your will to survive, and I don’t know how to reconcile that.
I am so angry that you let Mom back in. That again and again, until the last time it broke you. She did exactly what we knew she would, leaving you feeling more desperate and aching for love.
One of the hardest things for me to reconcile with is how hard you were on Cameron the summer before you died. You were relentless and mean. There was never any time to repair. He was so young. I don’t know if he ever recovered from having that wound left open.
As the regret grows in my heart, so does my wish list. I wish that you had left. I wish that 7,000 fucking dollars wasn’t one of the things that tipped your life into despair that day. It would have been $7,000 to get you out of that lease. To get you out of that house where their affair took place. To get you out of that bedroom. Away from that shower you stared at day in and day out, but it was. Instead, you sat there in your own triggers and panic. You slept in it, you mad dinner in it, and you showered it, you held your babies in it. How could we have expected anything else. You lived day in and out in your worst nightmare.
I wish you hadn’t given into others desires for you. I wish you would have shepherded your own life forward after you found out about the affair, but instead during this devastating time you had so many telling you what to do or who to be. Telling you it was awful or not bad at all, “so many woman had been through it”. You didn’t trust or believe in your own instincts. You did think that you could survive what they were telling you to do.
If anger and wishes were all that kept me up with dread close by, I might be able to endure it, but it is the regret that gets into my soul.
The regret that I didn’t believe you. That I didn’t listen. That when you told me you wanted to die nothing could have kept me from you. Telling you you weren’t alone and that I would be there for you. Instead I was weak and condescending. It is an aching that won’t let me forget.
I regret that I didn’t know more. That I didn’t have the knowledge or resources to recognize what the hell was happening to you. I didn’t know what C-PTSD was. I didn’t know what was really causing the panic attacks. Honestly I didn’t truly know what it was like until I had my first panic attack. It was then that I understood more about why you did what you did. I was in agony. Looking back I see you were living that for months with no end in sight.
I regret that I didn’t scream from the roof tops that you deserved better. That I didn’t clear all the doubt from your mind that you are worth loving, showing up for, and feeling safe with those around you. That anyone who doesn’t show you respect, kindness, and loyalty don’t deserve to be apart of your life, but I didn’t. I was meek. I was mild. I was passive. You deserved someone in your corner to fight for or with you.
I regret that your pain was too much for me to bare. That I couldn’t stay in it very well when you needed me most because I was so lonely, Carter was so sick, Chris was gone so much, and Josalyn was a baby. That I was too afraid to ask my husband for the money and time to come see you.
More than that I regret that I didn’t stand up to the fear and panic that set into my stomach from the moment I first hear you wails over the phone that September night. The noises that came over the phone, after you found out about Dave’s affair still reverberate my mind. They mix with cries I would hear whenever mom would be holding you captive and beating you. It was more than sadness for you, it started a panic in me with reverberations from the past that I didn’t understand, nor did I know what to do with. In response I distanced myself from your pain. I didn’t know how to help. I was watching it consume you and I felt it consuming me. It is my biggest regret of all.
I regret that I didn’t book my ticket immediately when I found out you were in hospital. They said you would be ok, but I knew from the first phone call you wouldn’t. But as I waited at the airport. Excited to get to you, even though you wouldn’t know I was there, the devastating call came that you had passed. It crushed me.
I regret not holding your hand, brushing your hair, and reminding you of how loved your were while you were still here. Those are moments I can’t get back.
I regret that I didn’t get to kiss your cheek, see your smile, or look into your clear blue eyes one last time. Can you forgive me? I am not sure I can.
I regret that I haven’t been there for your girls. That this big pile of “trauma” rotting in my soul is ignited when I am around them. For all these years since your death I have just been surviving while not understanding what was happening to me.
Beneath all the regret are the words I don’t speak. I don’t speak of the shame for fear of what giving it voice will mean. I feel shame that I am still alive and you aren’t. What stroke of fate would create such a life? It isn’t fair that I have stayed when you couldn’t.
I feel shame that I am getting help with childhood trauma when you couldn’t. All the whys ring in my head. Why didn’t we know? Why couldn’t someone see what was happening to you? Where was the help? Why do my kids get a mom and yours don’t? Why do I get to age and you don’t?
This place though it isn’t a place just for safety. It is also a place where truths have to be faced. The truth is, I’ve never let you go, I thought I did but not really. You live in me, around me, and sometimes the pain smothers me so I can’t breathe. The problem with that is is that I am here and you are there. That I need to breathe because if I don’t take a deep breath soon I am going to die too.
So, I’m letting go. I’m letting go of the shame that I have kept close to my heart, so I could punish myself for you being gone. I wasn’t there the way I hoped I would have been. I didn’t come back for you. I didn’t act in a way I respect or a way I want to be remembered by someone I love and I going to forgive myself for it and let it go.
I am letting go of the things I left unsaid. That I didn’t stand firm, proclaim you worth and remind you of your wonderful presence when you were in doubt. This has weighed heavily on me but I am learning to be stronger. To never let those I love around of their excellence. Of their worth and right to take up space. For their right to be treasured and of how important they are to me and to this world. It isn’t just words, this truth lives in my soul—the worth of others. It has been a painful lesson I have learned from losing you.
I am letting go of the idea that I could have saved you because there were many other people who let you down in much more important ways that altered your life.
I am letting go of the shame I feel about your girls because all I could do was barely care for my children. The disgust I feel in my soul for my human frailty has haunted me for years but I am letting it go. The cost of being human is high sometimes.
I am letting go of the anger I feel you have for me. I know you and I know there is a good chances you are angry but I don’t know for sure. Maybe someday we can hash it out.
I am letting go of the shame and sadness I feel that I am getting help and you never did. You needed to be considered. You needed to be listened to. You needed help. The expectation was to muscle through and get over it. I’m sorry. You deserved better.
Hardest of all I am letting go of the shame of my kids having a mom while yours don’t. That I get to hold and kiss my children daily. While each year passes and your motherless girls have un-wiped tears, and arms that ache to be held by you.
From that desperate call on September night with you wailing. To the evening where I received the dreaded phone call saying you were being rushed to the hospital. It all finally led to the silent, heavy night, the last call that came, where you were gone. Over those calls, over those three months, I spun my self into a web of dysfunction. The truth is that all along I believed it was all my fault. That I could put a stop to it. That I controlled life, death, and the powers that be. So much so that when my desires, my prayers, my efforts, and my pleas ultimately failed, that I had failed. That I failed you. I killed you. I. Killed. You.
I don’t now if it is huburous or my own desperation to control an impossible situation but I hated myself that day. I hated that you gave up but I hated myself more because I couldn’t make you stay.
I have learned that one soul, my own, is hard enough to carry through this life. Trying to carry the weight of yours as well has crushed me.
It wasn’t my fault and I did love you the best I could. I was loyal and good to you. I have been there for your girls to the best of my ability, despite my limitations. I couldn’t have saved you because no one can save anyone truly. We can walk with them, hold them, meet their needs but they must have the will to live, as much as it pains me to say. I couldn’t have saved you and it was never my part to.
These photos here are hard to look at. It is hard to look at the younger you, the younger versions of all of us. Behind those smiles there was so much pain, but the pictures paint this beautiful picture. Sometimes I stare at them and think “what the hell happened”. My mind becomes cluttered trying to align the nightmare behind closed doors with the smile on our faces. I ache for the young girl who I know had to hide so much pain, who would grow into the incredible woman I knew despite your experience. Who would eventually meet such a tragic end despite her best efforts.
As I lay down the weight of your life I want you to know I love. You will always be with me as I will always be with you. I know I will see you again and I look forward with anticipation. The laughter that will fill the room when I see you again will make the stars shine. Until then, I love you!
See you soon.
Love,
Laurin
