Signs

Thursday marked exactly one month since my sister passed away. To say that it seems unreal is an understatement. And, as so often is the pattern of grieving, we cannot remember where we put things, simple tasks take twice as long to do as before. We often make no sense when we speak. We find we are fuzzy-brained. The members of my family seek out ways to laugh when we can and find comfort in each other's presence. Personally, I am watching Everybody Loves Raymond the way I used to watch I Love Lucy. I cannot miss an episode. We swim in the pool a lot. Have lunch together. Cook. Read. I am probably doing a jigsaw puzzle a week, a place to rest my mind.

At about the 2-week mark of my sister's passing, my sister Susan and I received a rash of signs from her.

One morning, I got into my car to go to the library. I had cleaned out a dresser drawer about a week before this and found some cassette tapes. I thought they were some old music cassettes and my car actually has a cassette player underneath the CD, so when I found the tapes, I just put them in my purse, so I would not forget to check them out in the player in the car. So, I was digging for my keys and saw the tapes. I put the first one in as I was traveling down the road and sure enough it was an old music tape I had taped over with some other nonsense for some reason. It was basically trash. I pulled the next one out and did not hear anything. I was about to eject it when I heard a beep. Then, I heard someone saying something, - they were leaving a message. Turns out it was a tape from my ancient answering machine back when I actually had one with a removable cassette tape! I loved that thing but it go so old, I had to finally succumb to voicemail.

There were some bill collectors on there, my husband, my father, and lots of long pauses, and then...I heard it. My sister Beverly's voice. She said, "Hey Kath, it's Bev! I did find Liberty's picture at my house after all it wasn't at Dad's. Okay, sweetie, talk to you later!" I just about had a wreck. Keep in mind I had not heard her voice since she had the breathing tube and tracheotomy.

I crept the rest of the way to the library in my car. My sister and I loved to read and exchanged books all of the time. She turned me on to some great authors and got me back into reading at a time when I really needed the distraction with all of Liberty's issues going on. It was and still is a way to de-stress. So, through my tears, I told her hello and wondered if she was really back to give us some signs, and of course, asked her to give me more signs, to let me know it was really her and not just in my "head."

Now I have to stop here in the middle of the story to tell you that the previous day my other sister Susan and I were sitting around the pool and a very large black bird was walking around staring at us. I remarked that there had also been one at my house, very shiny, not a crow, and my father said it was a raven. My sister made the comment that ravens are said to house the souls of people who have passed on.

Now back to the story: I walked into the library, beginning to browse at "A" like I always do and I look down and my eyes fall on a book. The author is "Jo Beverly" and the title is "St. Raven." Chills ran up and down my arms.

I walked down the aisles kind of amazed and dazed and remembered to check out an aisle for yoga books before I left and there was a book sticking out about to fall off the shelf. It was a book by Eckert Tolle. My sister loved him.

That same day, my sister Susan got a letter in the mail from a woman who is in charge of Beverly's memorial scholarship fund we set up at the university. I don't want to print her full name but suffice it to say her last name was ... you guessed it, "Beverly."

If that wasn't enough, the next day, I turned on the TV to a Christian station, one I never have the channel set to, and find a program is just beginning and the name flashes across the screen: "Beverly Exercise" and I hear the announcer say, "...with your host, Beverly!"

Good God, this was really exciting and eerie at the same time. I yelled, "Hi Bev!" I was not completely surprised though. My mother did the same kind of thing, too, about 2 weeks after she passed away, giving me all sorts of unmistakable and amazing signs all in one day. I drew so much comfort from those and still do.

Later, my sister and I compared notes. Apparently she had felt her presence and received the same type of message I did and that was pretty much that not only was it great not to have a body, but that it was a relief to not have the body worry our society has, constantly putting the focus on our looks. She gave us a few more personal messages and, since that day, I have not felt her anymore.

We miss her.

In Memoriam

My eldest sister, Beverly, passed away in a room marked "23" on April 27 after spending 47 days in the ICU. She was 66 years old. She had an infection in her mitral valve which had to be replaced but before they discovered this, her lungs stopped working and she had to have a balloon catheter placed in an artery and was put on mechanical ventilation. She had a fever and Strep infection in her blood from the valve and was on massive amounts of antibiotics to even get prepped for surgery. After one week of antibiotics and being flat on her back on the vent, she underwent a mitral valve replacement with only a 50/50 chance of survival. She had an abscess in her valve and they could only take out so much of the infection without putting a hole in her heart. So, they replaced the valve, and kept her on antibiotics after surgery and just prayed the infection would resolve. It did. But, her lungs would not be strong enough to get off the vent. She had no blood pressure on her own and was on dopamine pressors. One night she pulled her tube out of her nose and coded but was shocked back to sinus rhythm. Another day along the way, we were told to call the family, but she rallied the very next day and after 2 weeks on the vent, they were able to put in a trach tube. I remember when she had the trach placed and got that God-awful vent tube out of her throat. She was smiling and blowing kisses to me. She could mouth, "I love you." Then they realized they put the wrong size trach tube in and she began bleeding from her throat. She had to go back to surgery to have it replaced. We began learning how to read her lips. I got her a white board and, with her glasses, she was able to write messages to us for awhile. But, she was shaking a lot. Some days her cognition was great and she was all there. Other days she was drugged and we could not read a thing she wrote, drawing nothing but squiggly lines. My sister from NY came down and she had put together a photo album that my sister just cherished! Shortly after that, her kidneys began to fail. She had so much fluid her body was bloated and the fluid wept through her skin, soaking the sheets. I would hold her hand and leave huge indentations in her flesh. She had bruises all over her legs and arms. Tubes, lines everywhere. Beeping machines, the blood pressure cuff going off constantly. She underwent dialysis 3 days a week but soon began to not tolerate it. Each time she began to be dialyzed her blood pressure would plummet. She had chest tubes put in to get the fluid out of her lungs. They wanted to replace the nasogastric tube with a stomach tube, but she could not be optimized for surgery. Bev had low platelets, a result of MDS (myelodisplastic syndrome) a blood disorder she had developed a few years earlier. She also had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and smoked which made it so hard for her to breathe. The turning point came when the dialysis port became infected and she had sepsis. Finally, her liver began to fail. One day, she asked us to let her go. She told us she was hurting. When we asked her when, she said, "Now." None of us were prepared for this. So, after papers were signed, the drips were turned off and the ventilator too. She breathed on her own for awhile. But, after about the fourth hour, her body shut down and she died. I was holding her hand. My sister and her daughter and I were the ones who were with her until the end, though going through a myriad of emotions, we were devoted to helping shepherd her soul to the other side. Her nurse, Tony, our angel, told her she would go to sleep and wake up in a beautiful place. He prepared her by having talks with her about it and then guided us through the whole process in which a room no one ever wants to find themselves in - a sterile, anxious, and sometimes hostile place - was transformed for just a few hours in time into a sacred and holy space.

Through all of this, Liberty has fared well, thank God. Beverly was Liberty's biggest advocate, the one who went with me to every IEP. She was her county's first ESE teacher! She went to bat for people with disabilities and she knew how to get things done. One of her colleagues has offered to go with me to the IEP which happens to be today. Liberty will be changing schools next year.

So much change.

I still cannot believe Bev is gone, that it happened at all, that there was even a memorial service. I know how grief is, it is like a trickster, just when you feel yourself standing on solid ground, a memory flashes back or a realization comes that brings you to your knees. There is no way around it but through. I was with my mom when she passed, too, holding her hand - but she had been in a coma for days, the end result of a long and winding road called cancer. Somehow with Bev, it was different. She was awake, coherent - I still relive it all and probably will for some time. She never closed her eyes and that was a kind of hell for us all.

Now, in the background of all of this the Gulf oil spill looms. Our beautiful beaches, way of life, economy, you name it - all hangs in the balance. The news here is surreal. One commercial commands that if you find stranded animals covered in oil, do not try to help, call their agency right away. Another advertises Dawn dish liquid and shows geese getting soaped up and bathed. "Tough on grease...easy on geese?" It's so sick! Then there were the waiters and waitresses at the beach restaurant crying that they are losing their jobs; the beach being flooded with people last weekend, taking samples of the pristine white sand that is in danger of being tarnished forever. Well, maybe not forever, but for at least 100 years or so. And, if the oil get into the marshes, which you know it will, it will never be gone. This is so much bigger than the Exxon-Valdez. And, you know what? Even scientists and officials at the public meetings won't speculate or tell the truth. They are afraid to tell the people who live and work on the beach that the biggest catastrophe to ever hit our oceans has been going on now for weeks. I suppose it will become apparent with time.

And yet I have been praying. We watch the daily reports of the whereabouts of the big blob on the map and actually breathe a sigh of relief that it has not hit here, though they say when the wind shifts, it is inevitable. It is like bracing for a hurricane that is always on its way, just about to strike. It has already begun to affect New Orleans. I keep hoping that there will be something that saves us somehow. I hope that I am not writing an epitaph for our home. If even the breeze becomes toxic, then we will be moving.

For now, I write, I work, I eat, I put on my clothes, I feed my birds, I bake my bread, I just take it moment by moment. Which I was supposed to be learning how to do all along. This is always the message, isn't it, when there is loss? To take one day at a time, moment by moment, and savor what you can from your time here.