Changes

As April inches along, getting closer and closer to my brother’s Heaven-iversary, the thoughts of 2 years ago creep into my mind more and more during the day. Easter is coming up fast, and Easter has become one of my least favorite Holidays, not because of what it is celebrating - thank God for what we get to celebrate, but because of all the things that have happened around Easter. 2 years ago on Easter, we were sad as a family because it was the 1 year anniversary of my Papa dying. We were sad because it was the last family gathering we were going to have for a long time. We were sad because we were saying good-bye to Kaylee and her family who were moving to Phoenix. Ahhh…hindsight is 20/20. What I didn’t know was God was giving us one last opportunity to get together and love on each other because 6 days later God was going to take Willie so He could love on him a little more in person Himself. I found out a week later that I had been saying goodbye to the wrong person, and that I no longer felt like Phoenix was too far away for one of my siblings to live.

I am a non-breather by choice, well really involuntarily, by choice until I figure out how to use a different coping mechanism. I have learned that people who don’t breath, don’t feel. It works out fantastically when I feel like I need to numb myself up, not that it’s a conscious thing, my body just does it. I find I am short of breath all the time and a bit short on patience and quick to be angry. All those pent up feelings have a way of leaking out as anger and now I feel bad for the people around me. I really need to figure out how to deal with things… :)

Thursday nights I find I miss my brother more and more. Thursday evenings I go to a class called Restore the Core, a pilates/yoga/ab class mix that focuses on strengthening the poor part of my body that got most stretched out while I was pregnant, but also focuses a lot on breathing. Lots and lots of deep breaths and breathing. Lame. If I would of known I was paying to have an hour of breathing, I may have rethought it. I know what me breathing will do to my fantastic coping. Needless to say, all the breathing gives my body enough oxygen to release some of pent up feelings from the past 2 years. And while I leave the class feeling quite relaxed - crazy what breathing well will do for you! - I find myself much more sad and dwelling on everything I have lost on this earth. And then I get so annoyed because I’m sure there have probably been far more blessings good things for me the past 2 years, but of course the things that stick in my head are the things that have gone wrong. Time to figure out how to change what I remember most.

Last night was the series finale of ER. Dear little ER. I have watched that show since the very very beginning and for a good 10 years I never missed an episode - talk about obsessed. Royal came along and I ended up missing some episodes to hang out with him - should of known then that it was love. :) But still, ER has been a constant in my life for what seems like forever, since I was 16, Thursday nights 10:00 (well 9:00 here in K-land) you could find me with some knitting (well knitting for only the last 9 years or so) in front of the TV. And thanks to all my stupid breathing I’d been doing earlier in the evening, my brother was on the forefront of my mind. And I went to bed sad and depressed because all I could think about was what life was like for me when I was 16. So much easier. So much happier. Kaylee and I shared a room (we didn’t live across a freaking country from each other), we picked Willie up everyday at the middle school when school was out, and I always made him sit in the back, because Kaylee was always driving, and he used to get so mad about. Willie was Willie, but was becoming more bearable and less annoying. He knew he was going to be a freshman the next year and I was going to be a senior. Time to start kissin’ up so he could use my friends to be cool. When Willie and I were in high school together, that was when I felt like we really started to become closer. He’d hang out with me and my friends in the parking lot after school, sitting on the back of the aqua colored Duster that I got to drive. I even think there might be a picture of that in the year book…I’m gonna have to see if I can find that…where in the world are my year books??? Probably at the lake house in Washington, or in storage somewhere.

Anyway, I’m rambling now…must be all the extra oxygen floating through my blood stream. Time to cut off the air, already! All I’m saying is that ER being over FOREVER, is just one more thing that makes me think about all the changes that have happened for me over the past few years. Some changes temporary, some changes permanent, some changes still changing. Having babies, quitting jobs, people moving, us moving, losing family members, losing relationships, losing friendships, making new friends, trying to restore lost relationships, trying to figure out who the heck I want to be and what is important to me, trying to figure out how not to live my life trying to make everybody happy. Some people don’t freaking want to be happy, and it’s not on me to fix that. So many things up the air, so many things different. At least God is constant. God is the same now as He was before my brother died. God is the same in Kansas as He was in Washington. God is the same now as He was before I put that tattoo on my arm. My tattoo. I love my tattoo. It is a constant reminder that I have changed too.