The Ember

Life has clearly kept me busy and away from time to write my emotions out. Something I dearly miss. Today though, I have had so many thoughts running through my mind. I decided to take time to get them out of my head where I can let them sit while I work through the emotions.

I am no stranger to death. I have history with it, far more close than I like to discuss or admit to. But unfortunately, death and me have co-existed since I grew in my mother's womb. Sometime half-way through the pregnancy my twin died. Can I say there is something a surviving twin feels from that? Not exactly, but I can say I've been made aware of death since my childhood learning about my twin not surviving. A few short years later, my grandpa was taken by a heart attack. Something my young self thought for sure was caused by our silly shenanigans of rough housing, thankfully my mother corrected that thinking. About 5 years later my neighbor's father died. Seems odd for a child to care about that, right? Well, he was a judge up in Idaho and my neighbor was my parent's best friend. I got lucky enough to be his and his wife's kid by proxy and we flew up in his tiny Cessna often to visit his dad. His dad also was my pen-pal, and not a week went by that he didn't diligently write me leaving me excited to daily check my mailbox and work on my penmanship. His death threw me into a deep depression of confusion. I didn't understand how someone so loved could be taken. I can honestly say 30 years and many deaths later, I am still no better equipped to handle the rippling undertow of death.

But, life continued and others left this earthly world leaving their loved ones and me behind. High school gave me a few years reprieve but young adulthood quickly caught up. We lost my grandpa (grandma had remarried) and my dad's dad within a few years of each other. The funerals, somber and filled with a bunch of faces I didn't recognize as everyone had grown up and being 8 hours north we hadn't had as much contact with the cousins and family as in our childhood. In my early twenties the knock came to my own door this time. I lost a son in the second trimester of pregnancy. I compartmentalized and moved on to surrogacy. Helping others have babies as I didn't ever want to go through that again myself. After a successful surrogacy pregnancy life surprised me and my husband and I had a boy. Four months after he was born, I was loading him up into our truck and got the call that my brother was gone. My only brother who being 18 years my senior, I'd lost a lifetime of memories with.

Each of these would hit me, feeling major in their own way. It would set me back a few steps. I'd privately mourn and then pull up my bootstraps, determined to keep on moving. Then we lost my biological dad. The call I answered still in bed, in the early hours. I remember worrying more about how my sisters were doing and not even really processing the gravity of the loss. Little did my sisters know, I wasn't even 2 months along pregnant with my last child. We survived that one rather messily and kept on, keeping on. Then my  grandma died. The grandma who I was so very much alike with my prickly exterior, full of discipline, routine and more love than she knew what to do with. Whose home was the only place I'd ever felt was a place I could breathe. That funeral was full of memories and love and all my sisters, a rarity to get the 6 of us back together in the same place with our various locations all over the West side of the country and Canada. Finally, my father in law succumbed to his battle with cancer and joined his maker. Another heartbreak, watching my husband and his family go through such deep loss while mourning my own loss of a father figure I adored.

But with each one, I pushed through and carried on. It's almost surreal to type it out, but helps to acknowledge each of the losses that have taken me to this 39th year. Showing the intricate trail that death leaves in each of our lives. No human will ever be able to step around and away from those trails. I am not the only with a history like this either. And yet, once again, we were all to familiarly reminded of deaths trail.

It has been 2 weeks since I got the news that my niece was gone. It was the 5 year anniversary of my bio dad's death and as the day progressed I was relieved to have handled it in a manner I felt was okay. I cried a bit, responded to a sister in text about it and just kept on with life. The lump in my throat I knew would ease with the passing days and things would be okay. And then it wasn't okay and most likely never will be again in the same manner as the beginning of that day. My oldest sister's daughter had been shot on a call that her police unit responded to. She had not sustained her injuries and the immediate denial and shock of that call felt like a time-warp running me through each and every death and then through all the 26 young years of her life in a 5 minute span. I don't think my husband has ever seen me lose it completely unwittingly, until that moment. My heart broke into a million pieces - pieces for my sister and her husband, for her other daughter and her son, for my sisters, my mother and father, for me, for my children. When the confirmation came from a police friend, I realized it was really truly the end of this beautiful child/young woman's life who I had loved since the moment she was born.

And yet, I woke up the next day and handled business. I told my oldest three children the news and have never seen a soul crumple until that moment when my 9 year old asked if he was ever going to see his auntie (what they called her).  I then got myself, my husband and our youngest up north to be with family and spent many hours driving, hugging family and going through the motions as just about every memory with my sweet, fiery, loving niece popped into my head. I alternated between disbelief and the thought that this happens to other families, not ours. Our niece wasn't on the news. Our sister and brother in law weren't in the middle of the biggest officer funeral the state had seen in ages. We weren't preparing to say goodbye to her.

She was the first officer killed in her city in 20 years and it was the largest funeral we had ever and I hope to never again, be a part of. It was overwhelming and so many moments were spent just stealing ourselves to put one foot in front of the other and hide our tears from the media. We spent the last two weeks just getting through it all. Spent it watching my courageous brother in law do a press conference telling the world that the Sacramento PD did not do anything wrong and his family supported the brother and sisters in blue who had done such an amazing job with my niece and her training. Spent with police processions and LEO's as far as the eye can see. Spent laying my head and hands on her flag covered casket, silent tears seeping onto that flag as you try to silently tell her goodbye and not break down with so many watching. Spent holding your sisters' hands as you share with the world the girl and young woman we loved and adored as cameras zoned into our sorrow filled faces and grief stricken souls. Spent listening to your favorite song be played by your favorite bagpipes as they accompany her into the funeral, the same song you sang her to sleep as a baby and still sing your own babies to sleep since they were born. Spent listening to her final call and the empty silence of no response bring out every emotion of fear, sadness, confusion and grief rip your body to shreds to the point you begin to shake uncontrollably and your husband has to put both his hands around your one, just to help you not lose it in a service surrounded by thousands of strangers. So much of what we went through was visibly painful, insult added to injury as we are a private, private family. Especially in our vulnerability and pain. So I've spent the last 5 days home, away from as many people as possible, trying to work through it. And today my brain said it needed to put these thoughts elsewhere so that when I'm ready I can come back to them and work on them one at a time.

Do I hurt? YES. I wake up with my body hurting as much as my heart does, something I did not ever think possible. This hurts worse than the loss of my own child. It may sound callous but I don't mean it as such. My niece and I had a special bond. She was my mini-me, in looks, attitude and in action. I was 13 when she was born and my practice kid. Or as my sister and I joked, one of my starter kids (along with her brother and sister). But she tested my patience in ways her siblings did not. She prepared me for the willpower, ferocity, quick wit and stamina my two boys carry. Something that bonded the 3 of them in ways I cannot even explain. I spent my entire childhood with this baby, toddler, preschooler, kid, teen who was like my very own doll. Who needs dolls when your sister has babies for you to play with in real life daily (or so your kid matured brain thinks)? LOL. Whenever I ran away, to my sister's house I went so I could be with my nieces and nephews. Friday and Saturday nights you'd find me at their home either babysitting or just hanging out. My brother in law taught me to drive a stick in the hilliest of hills in their town, much to my dismay and his amusement. He'd get out of that dusty old blue Mitsubishi truck and explain to the driver behind me I was learning stick shift and had refused to move until there were no cars behind me, just in case I couldn't get the clutch to engage. He'd get back in the truck laughing all the while I was mortified and wanted to cry. We'd spend as many days during the summer at their home, taking the kids to the park, walking the neighborhood, practicing for sports and playing. We spent hours playing video games and laughing. The happiest moments in my childhood, teen and young adulthood years were spent in their home with my nieces and nephews with some of my closest friends. And it was the majority of it.

Finally when I butted heads enough with my parents I was given the option to move out, I moved in with them under the agreement I would be their on call nanny. I'd groan as all three kids would come tumbling into my room jumping on my bed, pulling at my sheets begging me to get up. I'd ask my sister why she didn't teach her kids to sleep in and she'd joke she didn't have to because she had a nanny. I'd referee their soccer games and swear I'd never become a soccer mom. My sister would yell at me for not changing the lint in the lint trap, threatening that I'd start a fire and burn the house down. I would be in their classrooms with my sister, volunteering for the teacher. Field trips were my favorite and all the kids fought over being in the cool group with my niece or nephew as I chaperoned and watched the pure pride and joy on their faces. Halloween was another favorite, auntie tax and all. Being there on their first days of new pets, broken bones, new bikes and skateboards, and school. All of it was the best. So my niece felt more like a daughter and a sister rolled into one. As we grew up and I moved on and out, we became best friends. I became her confidante and her the teen going through life. And then one day she was all grown up and had become everything I had joked about being when I grew up. Living in a big city, graduating from Candidate Training as a Police Officer, owning and riding her own motorcycle and living so big and so loud and so loved that nothing could stop her. It went from me being her hero, to her becoming mine.

Now she is gone. Taken far, far, far too soon. No mother should ever have to bury her child. No aunt should ever have to watch her sister  and husband and niece and nephew say goodbye. She was supposed to bury me. She was supposed to get old and outlive me and be here for my children when it came time to saying their goodbyes and she would comfort them. And the one person who would have been here to get me through such an earth shattering loss, is gone. She would have felt it, walked it, honored it, and loved right through all of it. But she won't be and isn't. Bits of me want to scream that we all got robbed. She wouldn't want that, though. So it is the 14th day of trying to figure out how to keep moving, keep feeling, keep her memory alive, and to accept that she is gone from our lives on earth. I'm not sure I know how to this time. This is a whole new depth of loss to me - not daughter because I don't take that from my sister who did such an amazing job raising her. Not best friends - because her sister and her were truly best of friends. Not sister - because I have 6 of those that are alive and well. But some sort of mishmash of all of it rolled into the name of auntie.

Possibly that is what will get me through the worst moments. The realization that I was gifted a relationship that is extraordinarily rare and intimate. Something that not many will understand and that's ok because it was just ours. Our laughter, our tears, our fights, our makeups, our talks, our silly jokes and the love we both shared for my kids. I hope that she felt just as honored and amazed and loved at the similar relationship of 'auntie' she shared with my own kids. I hope that she knows how deeply freaking loved she was and is and will always be. I'm pretty sure she did. No kid grows up to be as brave, amazing, loving, hilarious, silly, kind, compassionate, bold, fierce, fiery, goofy and strong as she is and not have grown up with more love than you could possibly ever imagine or find space for. I hope and pray that my own children grow up to feel like that. That the world couldn't stop them because they already had everything they ever needed in the world and so they will set out to do right by the world, one day at a time. Just as I will move through this grief - one moment, one breath, one step, one day.

I  miss you beautiful girl, may the light shine upon you and your sacrifice forever shine into this world because it was not enough to hold all of you in it. Your EOW may have been 06.19.19 but your last ember won't ever, ever fade away; you have touched far too many lives and lit the fire in so many places that fire will continue on. We will make sure of it.