A Toast to Becky

Today was my sister's birthday, she would have been 38. Becky committed suicide in October of 2008.

Last year I was so entrenched in my grief that it was hard to attribute any new, additional, or different pain to the occasion of her birthday. It all hurt; her funeral, Halloween, Thanksgiving, her birthday, Christmas, the New Year.

Thankfully, time has dulled the pain and allowed me to begin to live again, but there are still stumbling blocks. Mothers day, my birthday, Thanksgiving . . . her birthday. Days when I think of her more than others. Days when I feel her loss, and the continual loss of her, more than others.

Like most families that don't live in the same town, we tended to have more to do with each other during holidays or on vacations. So it is those occasions that I miss her most.

Every year I've made a point to send her two presents in the month of December, knowing how often she got overlooked due to having a birthday so close to Christmas. This year I didn't. I told myself I'd go visit her grave site for her birthday. I didn't. I wanted to buy her a concrete angel to sit beside her grave this year - she had a fascination with angels. I didn't.

In fact, I've been so wrapped up in the upcoming holidays, finishing off presents, Bonnet's upcoming visit, Will getting out of school . . .

It wasn't until about half an hour ago that I realized it was the 20th already. I spent the entire day doing things, running errands, playing with my son, visiting with Charlene and Tori . . . living.

Now I sit alone in a quite house as tears run down my face and accept that in living and pursuing my life I am taking baby steps further and further from the sister I lost last year.

I know it's healthy, normal. I'm suppose to move on. But it hurts to realize she is already slipping away from me. How much longer until I don't think about her but once a month, twice a year, when I visit the town she's buried in?

She deserves to be remembered and I fear there are few that will remember her. She left behind no husband, no loving parents; just a son she didn't raise and four siblings - the oldest of which forgot her birthday the first year after her death.

Oh well, there is some whiskey in the kitchen. While not Jim, Jack, or Johny (Becky's boys, as she called them), it will do.

A toast to Becky on her birthday;

To shared laughter and shared tears.
I love you.