Introduction by Amanda Held Opelt

 

“He was my North, my South, my East, and West…”

From W.H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues”

Growing up, I spent plenty of sleepless nights worried something bad would happen to my parents.  Even as I entered adulthood, I understood that there would come a day when I’d be arranging for my parents medical care in their old age and eventually planning their funerals.  It’s what children expect to do for their parents.

When my grandmother died, I grieved her loss, but also realized that because she’d reached the ripe old age of 93, I’d been preparing for her death for a long time, and was comforted that she was no longer in pain.

When I made my vows to my husband, I remember my heart stopping at the thought of losing him.  I didn’t know many young widows but I knew his early death was a possibility and his eventual death was a certainty.

But there is one person whose death I never imagined, never feared, never anticipated at all.  My sister.

It never occurred to me that she wasn’t invincible.   My older sister had been my rock since I first entered the world, and I pictured us growing old together, sharing life together, raising kids together, and burying our parents together. 

But then one day, my otherwise healthy 37 year old sister(Rachel Held Evans) became sick with a bad case of the flu.  When she struggled to recover, she was hospitalized, was treated for an infection, and then began experiencing unexpected neurological symptoms.  The doctors discovered she was having non-stop seizures, and she was put into a medically induced coma when the usual medications didn’t work to improve her condition.  After 3 excruciating weeks, her brain began to swell and she passed away.  The doctors are still unsure of why or how it happened. 

It all still feels so impossible, so inexplicable, so tragic.  She was a wife and mother of a 3 year old and an 11 month old.  She was a highly acclaimed author and public speaker.  She was a woman of deep faith with a powerful ministry at the height of her career.  It was like she had left us mid-sentence.

I’ve heard it said that when you lose a sibling, you lose your childhood as well.  It’s true, she touched every part of my life.  There is no memory where she is not present, no future in which I did not picture her presence.  She was my only sibling and my entire life had been oriented around her. 

And yet, in those early months after her death, I downplayed my own grief.  I worried for her husband, now a widower, and her children, now without a mother.  I fussed and fretted over my parents whose grief at losing a child was unspeakable.  Somehow I categorized my grief as less important, second tier compared to theirs. 

The surviving sibling is often called “the forgotten mourner.”  The change in identity I experienced was more profound than even I realized.  Since she was my only sibling, I wonder at times, am I even a sister anymore?  Am I an only child?  How will I manage taking care of my parents in their old age without her?  What role should I play in her children’s life, now that their mother is gone?  I’m still figuring all of this out.

I’m not on the other side of this yet.  I’m not sure I ever will be.  I understand that good can come from great loss, that it can expand your capacity to love and be loved, that it can build perseverance and resilience.  But there is no cosmic balance scale, in which the good finally outweighs the bad and we finally move on fully mended.  That’s the thing about grief.  As author Jen Pollock Michel writes, “suffering is inventive.”  As much as you mend, grief rends again and again, as you pass holidays and birthdays, anniversaries and milestones. 

Somehow, though, I have learned to carry the grief, have become accustomed to its presence in my life.  Mostly I have learned that I am not alone, that many around me are carrying a similar burden to me, sometimes silently.  Our hope is that this space becomes a place where we are remember and mourn together the siblings we have lost, and therefore normalize the ups and downs of the life of grief.  We can also celebrate their lives and the legacy they leave behind.

Amanda can be found at:

@amandaheldopelt on twitter and Instagram 

Rachel & Amanda