It's not hard to figure out why I sometimes feel like I'm still 15 on the inside - that was how old I was when my sister died. That is the hardest thing that I have ever experienced - it caused a chasm in my life: my life while my sister was alive and my life after she died (the rest of my life). I feel like the mes that lived those two different lives are different, themselves. Well, obviously they are. But my old me is still inside me, it's just cut-off - separate, like it's own identity/consciousness. [To be clear - I'm not suggesting that I have multiple personalities. I'm merely saying that there is another part of me that feels cut-off or just very separate from the rest of me because of that traumatic event. But I'm all one personality/consciousness.] I think it's imperative to my recovery to try to resolve these two mes - to bring them back together, completely as one. The reason is primarily because I think the 15 year old me comes out and dominates my consciousness sometimes - precisely when I'm hurting again the way I hurt when I was 15 or younger. It's time for me to grow that 15-and-younger-year-old up - to fuse her with the me that I am today. I don't want to be 15 forever.
I guess it wasn't just that my sister died. Her death really was just the culmination of years of out-of-control, dysfunctional family interactions, primarily centered around my sister and her activities (as far as I could tell). I was going to write, 'behaviors', but it was more than just what she did, it was also my parents as well as my brother and me. We all contributed. She was the odd one out - she had learning disabilities; social issues; was 3 & 4 years older than my brother and I, respectively; had darker hair than either my brother or I did, etc. She was the 'black sheep', essentially. So of course she felt that way. She ran away from home for the first time when she was 16. I was 12 - I don't remember it very well, but I think it must've been in April or May - she wasn't gone long before my parents (with the aid of a local cop) retrieved her and sent her to 'Pathfinders', an Outward Bound program for teenagers to help build self-esteem/self-worth. I remember it being summer when she returned, then they sent her almost immediately to summer school - boarding school - in Maine! For troubled kids...
The thing is - throughout growing up, I had this very strong feeling like I was going to have a tragic life - like maybe I'd die. I always dreamed of being "rescued" by someone or maybe not even that - mostly the only "rescuing" was that they [actually, I've decided to name that role in my life: the Object Of My Affection or OOMA] would know I was going to die soon so that the OOMA would finally reveal their love for me. That was my dream for so long - I even thought of a movie about it - obviously very dramatic! - called 'Born to Die'. [It's so dramatic and tragic that it's kinda funny... so please feel free to eye-roll, laugh, whatever - without guilt!] I thought I had to be dying for someone to love me. I guess I felt like I was dying because I didn't feel loved.
And neither did my sister (feel loved). She made at least a couple of suicidal gestures or "calls for help". It was no secret that she was unhappy. She would get really into boys and her relationships with them. [This goes way back, huh? We're all love addicts and codependents. My whole family. Is it just the cycling and recycling of maladaptive behaviors (a.k.a. 'abuse')? Or is there something specific about me and my history?]
The boarding school (Hyde) that my parents sent my sister to was not like any other school that I'd ever been to or experienced. I will only write about my experience, which was 20 years ago, so I cannot say whether or not it is still like this, but it made me extremely uncomfortable. I hated going there for any reason, but mostly I hated 'family weekend'. It was a school for difficult, troubled teens. Some kids had issues with truancy, others were into drugs, others had run away from home (like my sister), etc. Cher's son (Elijah, his father is one of the Allman brothers) was a student there when my sister was there. Even Cher was there on family weekend.
Family weekend at Hyde consisted of all sorts of events that were more like a therapy retreat than a leisurely visitation. I remember that we were grouped with other families according to the regions of the country where we lived (so since my family was from Rochester, NY, we didn't get grouped with Cher who was from California.) By the way, Cher isn't as tall in person as she appears on TV - I remember noticing that it was mostly her hair that gave her a sense of height. Anyway, that's an aside. We were grouped in this regional way and had group family sessions. To me, this was hell because these sessions were basically amateur group therapy. We'd sit in a circle in a large room, grouped with our families. Then the facilitator (one of the teachers) would have us go around the room one by one and have us talk about how things were going in the family - including our feelings about it. Remember, I was 12-13 when my sister was at Hyde. I wasn't seeing a therapist for my own personal issues, and I certainly was not going to tell a roomful of strangers how I was feeling about my sister and my family! When it would be my turn (or my brother's or anyone else who really didn't want to be there), everyone would be listening and waiting - for what? something juicy, I guess - and we'd just be sitting there for a long time in silence. I finally figured out what they wanted - they wanted me to cry! That was the only way they'd move on! It was humiliating. I can still feel the anger inside me - how in hell is that helpful?!?!
Well, it turns out that Hyde was not as helpful as my parents had hoped. It didn't keep my sister from running away again the next chance that she had - which was when she came home for spring break in March of 1991. She came home to Rochester, NY, to find that we were in the midst of the worst ice storm in over a century. Of course, it was horrible - we didn't have electricity or heat for 10 days! I believe my sister came home around day 5 or so, I'm not sure. In any case, she stayed for maybe a day or two then left. She just drove off and never returned. (She had a car which my parents helped her to purchase the previous summer.) She was 18 at that time so I must've been 14 - well, actually, I turned 14 at the end of that month. In any case, being 18 meant that she had every right to run away from home (actually, she had that right at 16, but according to some strange loophole my parents were still financially obligated to her even if she ran off? Strange).
So yeah, that was a hard time when my sister ran away for the second time. I'm pretty sure I was sick with at least a cold, there was no heat or electricity at my house, my brother had escaped to a friend's house downtown where their power lines are underground so not only did he have electricity and heat, but he also had cable television! Then my sister comes home for her spring break and immediately leaves. Maybe this is another example of where my abandonment issues come from (being left there by my siblings who escaped).
We didn't know where my sister went. I cannot remember what it was like in those months except that my parents - especially my mom - were pretty upset and distraught. Oh, I do remember now that they had been called by the police in Syracuse, NY, telling them that their car had been impounded (my sister's car, actually, which was registered in my father's name). So we knew she had gone to Syracuse at some point, at least. It wasn't until Mother's Day that we heard from my sister - her new boyfriend had convinced her to call my mom for Mother's Day. That was the catalyst for my parents to move them back up to Rochester. They made an agreement with my sister - that my parents would move them and pay for her to live in an apartment with her boyfriend in Rochester as long as 1) she took classes to get her GED at the local community college (and take other college-level classes - she was gonna go into nursing, possibly) and 2) she didn't get pregnant. She agreed and that's what happened - they moved them both up to Rochester, got them an apartment, she enrolled in school, voila!
It was ok. I don't think we were getting along spectacularly, but I think we were getting along better than before she ran away. Honestly, I really do not remember - I was going through my own shit at school. Mostly, I hated my classmates and I'm pretty sure they hated me. I didn't like how everyone (my classmates) were acting all alike - conforming - and I didn't understand why they were drinking and smoking - basically doing everything we were warned not to do! I certainly wasn't doing those things! But...I also wasn't having any fun. I was depressed. I missed my best friend who had moved to the Midwest after 7th grade and I'd become obsessed with her, not understanding that I was developing romantic feelings for her or that my obsession with her was unhealthy (of course I didn't see it as obsession). I did well in school, though, because I knew how to do that.
Anyway, what I do remember is that while I was visiting my best friend in South Dakota over that February break, my parents told me that my sister was pregnant. They waited to tell me for when I was in South Dakota with my best friend because they knew I would need support, and that she was my most beloved supporter. I remember crying after I found out that my sister was pregnant. We were all upset - we thought it was the thing that would ruin her life. We were wrong.
The following months during her pregnancy and the two months she lived post-giving birth were the best months of our family's life with my sister. As soon as we got over the initial shock of her pregnancy, we just started planning our lives around a baby coming. It's an exciting thing - expecting a new being to love to enter your life. I remember a couple of very meaningful experiences with my sister at that time, one of which was when we took the bus downtown together - she showed me how to ride the bus - to pick out some clothes from a church basement where they had a consignment shop, specifically for pregnant women. The clothes were either really cheap or they may have even been free to those who needed them. My sister was living frugally, despite the fact that my parents were helping her. They weren't lavishly helping her, that's for sure. She didn't have a car and her boyfriend had a job painting houses, I think. In any case, she was always broke and my parents weren't bailing her out, even though they'd never let her starve, go unsheltered, etc. I think they were trying to teach her to take care of herself while also making sure she didn't completely fall by the wayside - they were her safety net.
I remember being in downtown Rochester, walking on the sidewalk across the street from the old Woolworth's on Main street (I think..). My sister told me to wait at that bus stop for some particular bus, but that she had to go across the street to a different bus for her to go home. I remember hugging her and saying bye, but wanting her to stay with me. I remember feeling kinda sad as I watched her cross the street and climb up into her bus. I remember missing her at that moment. Genuinely loving her and wishing she would stay with me. Twenty years later and I'm holding on to that memory because it was one of the few times I remember feeling in awe of her - genuinely loving her - instead of all of the slew of negative emotions I used to have associated with her and the events around her. I wish I had more time with her so I could have more good memories like that. But that's what I have.
That summer, I traveled to Spain - the second time I traveled to Europe (the first time was to Greece the summer of 1990 when I was 13). It was supposed to be an immersion type of foreign exchange program where I was supposed to speak the language. The issue was that I only knew two tenses for the conjugation of verbs - the present and past tense. As it turns out, there are many more tenses than that! Ha! Just trying speaking that way in English. You never will do anything, but you're always going to do it...also, you were never doing anything - you just did it. (Can't say, "I was doing that!" or "I would do that..." etc.) Yeah, it's hard. In any case, the language barrier wasn't even the major problem - the major problem was my homesickness which developed into the most intense major depressive episode I've ever had in my life (separate from the sadness that overcame me when my sister died.) It was also the very first major depressive episode of my life. I spent three weeks in Spain. The majority of that time was spent in a non-air conditioned room alone, playing cards by myself in over 100 degree weather. I didn't even know how to play solitaire so I made up games by myself. I wrote in my journal and wrote these amazingly sappy letters professing my love and homesickness to each of my family members, my best friend and even myself. One of our best dog's ever, Champ, a border collie, died while I was in Spain. I wanted to go home so badly that when I started bleeding two weeks early for my period I thought - hoped - I might be dying and so I thought they'd have to send me home! They didn't. I stuck it out in Spain for the whole three weeks.
Soon after I returned from Spain, I had the opportunity to see my favorite band in concert - U2 in Toronto, Ontario, during their Zoo TV tour (or was it Zoostation?). It was an amazing experience - my first big rock concert which we arrived several hours early for and upon finding our seats wayyy back in the rafters, where one would need binoculars to see the stage, a guy came up to us and pointed to the floor seats by the stage, saying "do you want to sit over there?" I was like "YES!! OF COURSE!!" but didn't quite trust him. In any case, being my foolishly trusting self, I traded tickets with him. Then, to my own disbelief, we were able to actually sit in the second row, center (just to the right of center) - a few feet from the stage! I could see Bono's sweat flick off of him as he pranced around! My only slight disappointment was that since we were so close and a little to the right of center stage, I couldn't see my favorite member - their lead guitarist, The Edge - very well because he was on the left. But that's ok! It was still one of the most magical nights of my life.
A month later, my sister gave birth by appointed C-section to my nephew. We didn't know if it was going to be a boy or a girl - I had put $10 or $5 on a girl so...I wrote in my journal that when my nephew got older, he would have to give me $5! It was supposed to be a joke. Of course, I didn't even consider inflation at the time! Those two months between his birth and their death were the best two months of my family's life with my sister. It brought us together - I have vivid memories of telling my sister that she was a good mother and that I loved her.
Then they were gone.
I went to bed on Wednesday, November 25th, 1992, probably relatively early in the night with nausea and maybe even a fever - I certainly did not feel well at all. I vaguely remember some noise in the middle of the night and maybe my Grandma yelling for someone (my brother) to get the front door. I don't know if that is a real memory or not. For some reason, though, I think it is real.
The next morning, Thursday, November 26th, 1992, was Thanksgiving. Since it was a holiday, I intended to sleep in as late as I felt like. However, although I'm pretty sure I still managed to sleep in a little, my Grandma woke me up at some point, as if she'd been wanting to wake me up for some time. She yelled something like, "Ok, it's time to get up, J." So I slowly started to get up. The first thing I noticed was that I was actually feeling a lot better than I had felt the night before - I didn't feel sick at all. After a few minutes, my Gram shouted, "Just put something on quickly and come out here. I need to talk to you." I asked if I could take a shower first and she said no. This response was unusual so I started to feel like something was wrong. I wondered what it might be - my other Grandmother had been sick with cancer for several years already, so I thought maybe something had happened to her. Or...maybe my parents - they were on vacation by themselves (the first in many years) in the Caribbean. My heart was starting to beat faster, so I put on whatever I could find nearby (probably the previous day's clothes on the floor) and walked out into the hallway. My Gram stopped me at the top of the stairs and said, "There's been an accident." My heart sank - I don't remember if thoughts even came through my head.
My Gram held my shoulder and said, "Jodi, Vinnie and Nick were all hit by a train last night." In a panic, I said, "are they ok?"
"No, they're dead."
In retrospect, I realize that asking if they were ok was kind of a stupid question - who gets hit by a train and lives? I mean, I had seen Stand By Me as a child and loved it! The story was built around a boy who had been walking in the woods by the train tracks and had been hit and killed by a passing train. It was his dead body that the four young boys (main characters) set out to find after hearing about it on the radio and knowing there would be a reward. Yet, I didn't register these facts when my Gram said they were hit by the train. In those split seconds, I still held on to the hope that they were still alive. It's strange how time slows down in those moments - I really remember it like that, slowly coming to the realization that there's no hope, that they're gone. It's as if I did CPR, gave her my internal organs, held him tight - everything to attempt to keep them alive - all within those fractions of a second until those wretched words came out of my Grandmother's mouth, "they're dead." Then WHAM! he fell out of my arms, the organs vanished from her frame and they all evaporated into thin air. Everything changed.
Forever.
I guess I split apart that day, too. The everything I'd been up until that moment versus everything I'd ever become after that moment. The chasm formed.
The chasm stretched from the moment I found out that they had died, spanning until my parents arrived back in Rochester, having to cut their vacation short to come home to bury their dead daughter and grandson. It took almost 24 hours just to get a hold of them to tell them that they had died. Then it took almost another 24 hours before they arrived home in Rochester. I think those hours comprised the most profound and intense feelings of abandonment that I have ever endured. Until that time, I had always had my mother to depend on and be there for me when I was sad or hurt or let down, etc. For the first time in my life, I was completely alone in my time of need. Sure, my uncle and some cousins, etc., immediately drove or flew to our house in Rochester to be with us, but that wasn't the same as my mother. Looking back now, I know it was an unhealthy dependency that I had on her - and continued to have on her for another couple of decades (yes, if you do the math you'll realize that I'm saying I have only very recently stopped depending on her for my personal emotional welfare). It doesn't actually matter that it was unhealthy at the time because it fell through when I needed it the most, leaving me feeling the most severely abandoned that I had or have ever felt in my life until then or since.
[But whose fault is it? Is there someone I can blame? Not really, I'd say. My mother was at fault only a little in the sense that I should never have been that dependent on her and she clearly co-created my codependency. But it wasn't her fault for going on vacation! And it wasn't her fault that my sister died! And even though she co-created my codependency issues, she is also a victim of her own upbringing that created her codependency issues and thus, I do not feel that it's completely justified to fault her for that, either. Or maybe it is. I guess I don't see the point. I've always gotten so much love from my mother. I cannot imagine that she would ever have wanted me to hurt because of her - it was never her intention! Of course, "even the best intentions are sometimes in need of redemption", as so beautifully sung by Death Cab for Cutie.]
It felt like I was in a freefall into nothingness...I was just falling and falling and crying and crying. Two of my best friends (who had read about my sister's death in the newspaper even before I had been awoken by my Gram) took me to see the new Disney movie, Aladdin, that was opening that day. It was hard for me to pay attention - any break in the dialogue or song, I found my thoughts moving back to my reality and I would start to cry. I certainly couldn't seem to find joy in the 'happy ending'. That first night was pure hell. I didn't sleep (at least, I don't remember if I eventually fell asleep or not). Every time I closed my eyes, I thought about them getting hit by the train or any number of nightmarish visions. And so much guilt. Even the last journal entry I wrote had been mean about them - how badly they smelled in the car (well, with the exception of my nephew - I wondered how such a perfect baby could come out of my sister's body - I may have even said 'gross body'. I was sooo mean, even in my journall!!) I was so scared. So very scared...
In a way, when some of my sister's ex-friends came by our house while we were out one day and stole most of my sister's and her boyfriend's things (including their Nintendo system, TV, VCR, etc. as well as my family's canoe (weird, right?)), it helped to close the chapter on that part of my life. Not only were they gone, but their possessions were now gone, too. As if they never existed - there remained no trace of their lives.
Actually, that's not true at all. We still had boxes of photos and other miscellaneous items that they hadn't had at their apartment. And of course, it's not these things or even those photos that substitute for their presence. They're gone. It's the ultimate abandonment.
I wonder if writing this down like this will help me to fuse again with that 15 year old still hanging out - lost - inside me. I guess I won't know for some time. I guess I just need to keep trying to piece these fragments of a soul back together any way I can imagine. And maybe...someday...I will find that I am whole again.
[Me at my sister's grave in Rochester, NY - the last time I was there. 2009. My nephew's buried with her and his father/her boyfriend, Nick's ashes are also in the casket with them. So all three lay there - 6 feet under the ground. It took ten years to complete her custom-sculpted tombstone. It sure is beautiful.]
The boarding school (Hyde) that my parents sent my sister to was not like any other school that I'd ever been to or experienced. I will only write about my experience, which was 20 years ago, so I cannot say whether or not it is still like this, but it made me extremely uncomfortable. I hated going there for any reason, but mostly I hated 'family weekend'. It was a school for difficult, troubled teens. Some kids had issues with truancy, others were into drugs, others had run away from home (like my sister), etc. Cher's son (Elijah, his father is one of the Allman brothers) was a student there when my sister was there. Even Cher was there on family weekend.
Family weekend at Hyde consisted of all sorts of events that were more like a therapy retreat than a leisurely visitation. I remember that we were grouped with other families according to the regions of the country where we lived (so since my family was from Rochester, NY, we didn't get grouped with Cher who was from California.) By the way, Cher isn't as tall in person as she appears on TV - I remember noticing that it was mostly her hair that gave her a sense of height. Anyway, that's an aside. We were grouped in this regional way and had group family sessions. To me, this was hell because these sessions were basically amateur group therapy. We'd sit in a circle in a large room, grouped with our families. Then the facilitator (one of the teachers) would have us go around the room one by one and have us talk about how things were going in the family - including our feelings about it. Remember, I was 12-13 when my sister was at Hyde. I wasn't seeing a therapist for my own personal issues, and I certainly was not going to tell a roomful of strangers how I was feeling about my sister and my family! When it would be my turn (or my brother's or anyone else who really didn't want to be there), everyone would be listening and waiting - for what? something juicy, I guess - and we'd just be sitting there for a long time in silence. I finally figured out what they wanted - they wanted me to cry! That was the only way they'd move on! It was humiliating. I can still feel the anger inside me - how in hell is that helpful?!?!
Well, it turns out that Hyde was not as helpful as my parents had hoped. It didn't keep my sister from running away again the next chance that she had - which was when she came home for spring break in March of 1991. She came home to Rochester, NY, to find that we were in the midst of the worst ice storm in over a century. Of course, it was horrible - we didn't have electricity or heat for 10 days! I believe my sister came home around day 5 or so, I'm not sure. In any case, she stayed for maybe a day or two then left. She just drove off and never returned. (She had a car which my parents helped her to purchase the previous summer.) She was 18 at that time so I must've been 14 - well, actually, I turned 14 at the end of that month. In any case, being 18 meant that she had every right to run away from home (actually, she had that right at 16, but according to some strange loophole my parents were still financially obligated to her even if she ran off? Strange).
So yeah, that was a hard time when my sister ran away for the second time. I'm pretty sure I was sick with at least a cold, there was no heat or electricity at my house, my brother had escaped to a friend's house downtown where their power lines are underground so not only did he have electricity and heat, but he also had cable television! Then my sister comes home for her spring break and immediately leaves. Maybe this is another example of where my abandonment issues come from (being left there by my siblings who escaped).
We didn't know where my sister went. I cannot remember what it was like in those months except that my parents - especially my mom - were pretty upset and distraught. Oh, I do remember now that they had been called by the police in Syracuse, NY, telling them that their car had been impounded (my sister's car, actually, which was registered in my father's name). So we knew she had gone to Syracuse at some point, at least. It wasn't until Mother's Day that we heard from my sister - her new boyfriend had convinced her to call my mom for Mother's Day. That was the catalyst for my parents to move them back up to Rochester. They made an agreement with my sister - that my parents would move them and pay for her to live in an apartment with her boyfriend in Rochester as long as 1) she took classes to get her GED at the local community college (and take other college-level classes - she was gonna go into nursing, possibly) and 2) she didn't get pregnant. She agreed and that's what happened - they moved them both up to Rochester, got them an apartment, she enrolled in school, voila!
It was ok. I don't think we were getting along spectacularly, but I think we were getting along better than before she ran away. Honestly, I really do not remember - I was going through my own shit at school. Mostly, I hated my classmates and I'm pretty sure they hated me. I didn't like how everyone (my classmates) were acting all alike - conforming - and I didn't understand why they were drinking and smoking - basically doing everything we were warned not to do! I certainly wasn't doing those things! But...I also wasn't having any fun. I was depressed. I missed my best friend who had moved to the Midwest after 7th grade and I'd become obsessed with her, not understanding that I was developing romantic feelings for her or that my obsession with her was unhealthy (of course I didn't see it as obsession). I did well in school, though, because I knew how to do that.
Anyway, what I do remember is that while I was visiting my best friend in South Dakota over that February break, my parents told me that my sister was pregnant. They waited to tell me for when I was in South Dakota with my best friend because they knew I would need support, and that she was my most beloved supporter. I remember crying after I found out that my sister was pregnant. We were all upset - we thought it was the thing that would ruin her life. We were wrong.
The following months during her pregnancy and the two months she lived post-giving birth were the best months of our family's life with my sister. As soon as we got over the initial shock of her pregnancy, we just started planning our lives around a baby coming. It's an exciting thing - expecting a new being to love to enter your life. I remember a couple of very meaningful experiences with my sister at that time, one of which was when we took the bus downtown together - she showed me how to ride the bus - to pick out some clothes from a church basement where they had a consignment shop, specifically for pregnant women. The clothes were either really cheap or they may have even been free to those who needed them. My sister was living frugally, despite the fact that my parents were helping her. They weren't lavishly helping her, that's for sure. She didn't have a car and her boyfriend had a job painting houses, I think. In any case, she was always broke and my parents weren't bailing her out, even though they'd never let her starve, go unsheltered, etc. I think they were trying to teach her to take care of herself while also making sure she didn't completely fall by the wayside - they were her safety net.
I remember being in downtown Rochester, walking on the sidewalk across the street from the old Woolworth's on Main street (I think..). My sister told me to wait at that bus stop for some particular bus, but that she had to go across the street to a different bus for her to go home. I remember hugging her and saying bye, but wanting her to stay with me. I remember feeling kinda sad as I watched her cross the street and climb up into her bus. I remember missing her at that moment. Genuinely loving her and wishing she would stay with me. Twenty years later and I'm holding on to that memory because it was one of the few times I remember feeling in awe of her - genuinely loving her - instead of all of the slew of negative emotions I used to have associated with her and the events around her. I wish I had more time with her so I could have more good memories like that. But that's what I have.
That summer, I traveled to Spain - the second time I traveled to Europe (the first time was to Greece the summer of 1990 when I was 13). It was supposed to be an immersion type of foreign exchange program where I was supposed to speak the language. The issue was that I only knew two tenses for the conjugation of verbs - the present and past tense. As it turns out, there are many more tenses than that! Ha! Just trying speaking that way in English. You never will do anything, but you're always going to do it...also, you were never doing anything - you just did it. (Can't say, "I was doing that!" or "I would do that..." etc.) Yeah, it's hard. In any case, the language barrier wasn't even the major problem - the major problem was my homesickness which developed into the most intense major depressive episode I've ever had in my life (separate from the sadness that overcame me when my sister died.) It was also the very first major depressive episode of my life. I spent three weeks in Spain. The majority of that time was spent in a non-air conditioned room alone, playing cards by myself in over 100 degree weather. I didn't even know how to play solitaire so I made up games by myself. I wrote in my journal and wrote these amazingly sappy letters professing my love and homesickness to each of my family members, my best friend and even myself. One of our best dog's ever, Champ, a border collie, died while I was in Spain. I wanted to go home so badly that when I started bleeding two weeks early for my period I thought - hoped - I might be dying and so I thought they'd have to send me home! They didn't. I stuck it out in Spain for the whole three weeks.
Soon after I returned from Spain, I had the opportunity to see my favorite band in concert - U2 in Toronto, Ontario, during their Zoo TV tour (or was it Zoostation?). It was an amazing experience - my first big rock concert which we arrived several hours early for and upon finding our seats wayyy back in the rafters, where one would need binoculars to see the stage, a guy came up to us and pointed to the floor seats by the stage, saying "do you want to sit over there?" I was like "YES!! OF COURSE!!" but didn't quite trust him. In any case, being my foolishly trusting self, I traded tickets with him. Then, to my own disbelief, we were able to actually sit in the second row, center (just to the right of center) - a few feet from the stage! I could see Bono's sweat flick off of him as he pranced around! My only slight disappointment was that since we were so close and a little to the right of center stage, I couldn't see my favorite member - their lead guitarist, The Edge - very well because he was on the left. But that's ok! It was still one of the most magical nights of my life.
A month later, my sister gave birth by appointed C-section to my nephew. We didn't know if it was going to be a boy or a girl - I had put $10 or $5 on a girl so...I wrote in my journal that when my nephew got older, he would have to give me $5! It was supposed to be a joke. Of course, I didn't even consider inflation at the time! Those two months between his birth and their death were the best two months of my family's life with my sister. It brought us together - I have vivid memories of telling my sister that she was a good mother and that I loved her.
Then they were gone.
I went to bed on Wednesday, November 25th, 1992, probably relatively early in the night with nausea and maybe even a fever - I certainly did not feel well at all. I vaguely remember some noise in the middle of the night and maybe my Grandma yelling for someone (my brother) to get the front door. I don't know if that is a real memory or not. For some reason, though, I think it is real.
The next morning, Thursday, November 26th, 1992, was Thanksgiving. Since it was a holiday, I intended to sleep in as late as I felt like. However, although I'm pretty sure I still managed to sleep in a little, my Grandma woke me up at some point, as if she'd been wanting to wake me up for some time. She yelled something like, "Ok, it's time to get up, J." So I slowly started to get up. The first thing I noticed was that I was actually feeling a lot better than I had felt the night before - I didn't feel sick at all. After a few minutes, my Gram shouted, "Just put something on quickly and come out here. I need to talk to you." I asked if I could take a shower first and she said no. This response was unusual so I started to feel like something was wrong. I wondered what it might be - my other Grandmother had been sick with cancer for several years already, so I thought maybe something had happened to her. Or...maybe my parents - they were on vacation by themselves (the first in many years) in the Caribbean. My heart was starting to beat faster, so I put on whatever I could find nearby (probably the previous day's clothes on the floor) and walked out into the hallway. My Gram stopped me at the top of the stairs and said, "There's been an accident." My heart sank - I don't remember if thoughts even came through my head.
My Gram held my shoulder and said, "Jodi, Vinnie and Nick were all hit by a train last night." In a panic, I said, "are they ok?"
"No, they're dead."
In retrospect, I realize that asking if they were ok was kind of a stupid question - who gets hit by a train and lives? I mean, I had seen Stand By Me as a child and loved it! The story was built around a boy who had been walking in the woods by the train tracks and had been hit and killed by a passing train. It was his dead body that the four young boys (main characters) set out to find after hearing about it on the radio and knowing there would be a reward. Yet, I didn't register these facts when my Gram said they were hit by the train. In those split seconds, I still held on to the hope that they were still alive. It's strange how time slows down in those moments - I really remember it like that, slowly coming to the realization that there's no hope, that they're gone. It's as if I did CPR, gave her my internal organs, held him tight - everything to attempt to keep them alive - all within those fractions of a second until those wretched words came out of my Grandmother's mouth, "they're dead." Then WHAM! he fell out of my arms, the organs vanished from her frame and they all evaporated into thin air. Everything changed.
Forever.
I guess I split apart that day, too. The everything I'd been up until that moment versus everything I'd ever become after that moment. The chasm formed.
The chasm stretched from the moment I found out that they had died, spanning until my parents arrived back in Rochester, having to cut their vacation short to come home to bury their dead daughter and grandson. It took almost 24 hours just to get a hold of them to tell them that they had died. Then it took almost another 24 hours before they arrived home in Rochester. I think those hours comprised the most profound and intense feelings of abandonment that I have ever endured. Until that time, I had always had my mother to depend on and be there for me when I was sad or hurt or let down, etc. For the first time in my life, I was completely alone in my time of need. Sure, my uncle and some cousins, etc., immediately drove or flew to our house in Rochester to be with us, but that wasn't the same as my mother. Looking back now, I know it was an unhealthy dependency that I had on her - and continued to have on her for another couple of decades (yes, if you do the math you'll realize that I'm saying I have only very recently stopped depending on her for my personal emotional welfare). It doesn't actually matter that it was unhealthy at the time because it fell through when I needed it the most, leaving me feeling the most severely abandoned that I had or have ever felt in my life until then or since.
[But whose fault is it? Is there someone I can blame? Not really, I'd say. My mother was at fault only a little in the sense that I should never have been that dependent on her and she clearly co-created my codependency. But it wasn't her fault for going on vacation! And it wasn't her fault that my sister died! And even though she co-created my codependency issues, she is also a victim of her own upbringing that created her codependency issues and thus, I do not feel that it's completely justified to fault her for that, either. Or maybe it is. I guess I don't see the point. I've always gotten so much love from my mother. I cannot imagine that she would ever have wanted me to hurt because of her - it was never her intention! Of course, "even the best intentions are sometimes in need of redemption", as so beautifully sung by Death Cab for Cutie.]
It felt like I was in a freefall into nothingness...I was just falling and falling and crying and crying. Two of my best friends (who had read about my sister's death in the newspaper even before I had been awoken by my Gram) took me to see the new Disney movie, Aladdin, that was opening that day. It was hard for me to pay attention - any break in the dialogue or song, I found my thoughts moving back to my reality and I would start to cry. I certainly couldn't seem to find joy in the 'happy ending'. That first night was pure hell. I didn't sleep (at least, I don't remember if I eventually fell asleep or not). Every time I closed my eyes, I thought about them getting hit by the train or any number of nightmarish visions. And so much guilt. Even the last journal entry I wrote had been mean about them - how badly they smelled in the car (well, with the exception of my nephew - I wondered how such a perfect baby could come out of my sister's body - I may have even said 'gross body'. I was sooo mean, even in my journall!!) I was so scared. So very scared...
In a way, when some of my sister's ex-friends came by our house while we were out one day and stole most of my sister's and her boyfriend's things (including their Nintendo system, TV, VCR, etc. as well as my family's canoe (weird, right?)), it helped to close the chapter on that part of my life. Not only were they gone, but their possessions were now gone, too. As if they never existed - there remained no trace of their lives.
Actually, that's not true at all. We still had boxes of photos and other miscellaneous items that they hadn't had at their apartment. And of course, it's not these things or even those photos that substitute for their presence. They're gone. It's the ultimate abandonment.
I wonder if writing this down like this will help me to fuse again with that 15 year old still hanging out - lost - inside me. I guess I won't know for some time. I guess I just need to keep trying to piece these fragments of a soul back together any way I can imagine. And maybe...someday...I will find that I am whole again.
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