(I didn’t write this with the thought to publish it. Writing is cathartic to me…but several people who read it thought that maybe it would help to share it…I want readers to know that I am very aware that suffering is not something I am going through by myself…I know that there are others who do so, and many who suffer greatly.)
I have not been sleeping well for almost a year now….and there’s nothing like thinking about things you can’t do a thing about to help keep you awake!
Some of it, I think, has to do with losing my little sister Ruthie to lung cancer last August. She got to be 63 for 11 days, but she spent them in the hospital, knowing it would be her last birthday on this earth.
There have been many sleepless nights asking God why…Why take someone young when there is an old lady I know that wants to die? Why take someone who’s first grandbaby is due any day now when she wanted to be a grandmother so badly?
These are things I will probably never know, and I think sometimes that I will ask God when I step inside those pearly gates, but it probably won’t matter then.
But it sure matters now… Last 4th of July holiday, my sister Raye and I went to Manhattan and spent three days with Mike and Ruth. There was non-stop talking, eating, fun and fireworks. We had no idea it would be our last get-together outside of hospital walls. Then for most of the next three weeks, there were hospital visits, a few days where she got to go home, and then one more hospital stay before they sent her to a hospice house.
I think about Raye softly singing hymns to Ruthie as she laid there struggling to breathe. I remember that the KC Royals were on the TV in the room and how Ruthie loved to watch them play. Of course, she wasn’t aware of that game.
I think on all this at night. Also, about my little brother Bobby who passed away in March of 2023. He was 64. And how he appeared to me one night and said, “Katy, I can walk again.” That is a memory I treasure…but I haven’t heard from Ruthie. I know where she is though, and I know Mom and Dad are delighted to have them there!
Yes, Bobby and Ruthie were in their early 60s…my brother Chuck will be 66 this year, Raye is nearing 70 and I am almost 72…not sure why we got to live longer…that’s something else I think about when I can’t sleep.
Last night, my thoughts of Ruthie were about when we worked together at the Republican in the 1980s…I think Ruth started in 1983 or 1984 and then left for more schooling in early 1986. We were together all the time because we worked together and we still lived at home. When she quit working to go to Manhattan Vo-Tech to become a medical transcriptionist, I actually was “homesick” for her at work for several weeks.
And then I thought of my nephew Marcus, another family member I got to work with at the newspaper with for four years until his job was terminated. We had always been close, mostly because I tried to help his mother as much as I could with helping raise him when they came to live with mom and dad. My memories range from telling “Lone Ranger” stories until he fell asleep, to playing in the park and going on “adventures.” When he had to leave his job at the newspaper, it was more “homesickness” and “grief.” I don’t get to see him as much as I would like to these days.
But, in retrospect on all the above, I think it is memories of “the days gone by” that are causing this “homesickness and grief.” Lots of memories of a happy family, living a simple, God-believing life, in a little home in the country.
And I wish I could go back… back to simple times before “homesick-ness” and “grief” became words I am all too familiar with.
I know I am not the only person to deal with grief…and all of these experiences sure make me more sympathetic to sleepless, homesick and grieving people.
Maybe that’s why.