The following message (subject: memories) was posted by Jenn, on 12/31/2004 9:05:18 AM.

It occurs to me that there is so much of a person that is defined by their families and their place in it. Family is such a part of man's definition that important parts of communication included whose child one was, such as I am "William's son". It occured to such a great degree that it serves as the basis for so many surnames. In that light, it is small wonder to me that a part of expressing our heritage is really compromised when we lose a sibling. It created in me, probably in us all, a need to convey their places in my family and also to keep them alive in the only way that I can, by speaking about them. To the extent that this is met with resistance is also the extent that the frustration of grief is compounded. Not only aren't there many who care to hear about them, it feels like they now only exist inside my memory of them. And really there isn't any other way they exist other than inside my own head. If I get amnesia or Alzheimer's, for me their memory would cease.

These things are all interconnected with me, and pull against each other in chaos. Sometimes I wonder whether trying to speak of them is only a compensatory measure. They are gone and I can never get them to be alive again, so that's all I can do. Sometimes I walk around with them all swimming in my head and know that they are only in my head anymore and not in any real space or time. Then I feel an incredible sense of being disconnected with people that are alive, that I'm passing at that time, or worse yet, that I'm actually interacting with, because they don't know who is swimming inside my head. And they can NEVER know them. It's like being caught between the living and the dead, truly. Everyone I've met since 1979 can never know my sister Linda. And now everyone I will ever meet since October will never know my sister Norma.

And with each sibling lost, I have more stuff that has to sometimes circulate in my head as I try to remember their lives, try to hold on to their details. I saw a Hummer the other day, which the funeral home which handled Norma's burial uses as their lead car. It took me down a path where my head was swimming in the only evidence that I have the power to conjure up, outside pictures--my memory, that my sister was here a few months ago. It's like they're all in my mind now. And that seems such an isolated way of "existence" for them.

Jenn