Reflection

Sixteen years ago today my older sister died of breast cancer. She was in her late 30’s and I was in my mid 30’s. I’ve spent the last sixteen years trying to find a way to cope with the tragedy of the experience. It really broke my heart and the experience and loss of her devastated me. My body took a toll and has stored a lot of trauma from the experience. Slowly I have been releasing it. But today something else happened. I realized   I  needed to let go of the fear of the experience. I had been clinging to it for a long time.

When I went to mass today, to pray in remembrance of her and to pray for her lovely daughter who is now twenty-one years old, the priest spoke about the gifts that can come out of our tragedies. We can see life in a new way from such experiences. He spoke about a family he was counseling at the hospital that was facing an illness with their child. And he mentioned that the father said how much the experience had changed the family and now they could now really see what was important.

Later that afternoon, I was speaking to a mother at the school where I work about her experience losing a child to cancer, when the child was five and a half years old. “I know this might sound strange, but she was such a gift to us. She taught us so much about life.” She expressed to me that losing this little girl gave her the gift of realizing the importance of living every day. It also made her come to see that we are more than our physical bodies.

It was such an intimate conversation. And we were both grateful to share it in the hallway at school, next to the girl’s bathroom, while she was waiting for the bell to ring and pick up her boys.

I end this day asking myself: have I allowed myself to receive the gifts of this experience with my sister’s death. One thing I know for sure, she and I loved each other. However imperfect our relationship was and however difficult many moments together were, there was genuine love between us. And when she got sick, the love between us only deepened with compassion.

I am praying now to open to the gifts the universe wants to give me out of this profound, live changing experience. I know it’s time to transform the sorrow and let it become more than fear, and really let the love my sister and I shared become a healing force in me. Maybe I am meant to share that healing with others. I believe in love, in the goodness of life, in the beauty of sorrow, and in the possibility of healing.