Midnight Grief

I should be asleep. But I'm not.

I'm indulging myself in a bout of selfish musing - grief if you will - for my sister, Catherine, who just turned 49, passed away. I learned about it yesterday but she died the evening before.

She lives on a farm in Central Oregon with her husband, Willy, a retired Los Angeles Firefighter. Her two children, Lee and Laurel are in college. She and Willy were sitting in the parlor and he went out to get some wood for the fireplace. When he returned, she was dead. It happened that quickly. She had not been ill.

Tempus fugit - time flies. Things happen and somehow I feel strangely disconnected - yet profoundly moved by her death. I recall the little girl, the little sister who looked up to her oldest brother. 

I recall the young lady, the time when camping in very cold weather on the north branch of the Kern River, she was in an inferior tent and an inferior sleeping bag.  It was Catherine, my brother Jim (who died in an automobile accident thereafter) and me.  She said that her feet were very cold, I asked to take a look and immediately thought that her feet were "frozen" because of the color of her toenails - She painted them black, they weren't frozen. 

I think of the innocent child with the face of an angel who shoplifted popsicles because we didn't have money for them and we children all wanted some. 

My youngest sister, Paris, has been hit the hardest by her death. Paris's oldest son, Jon died six weeks ago. Death is with us always. I know that. Grief doesn't address the loss. It's simply the process by which we cope.

And I am awake when I should be asleep, blogging because I don't know what else to do to cope with my sister's death.