Ramana: “Water cannot be made dry water. Seek the Self; the mind will be destroyed.”

Rob is away for several days on vacation. This morning I went upstairs to see what needed to be done before my sister comes in a month or so while Rob has his kidney stone surgery. I noted that there were no pillows on the guest room bed and the blanket needed to be put back on.

Then before I knew it, I was sitting on the closet floor looking at old photos of us when there were four of us instead of two. The heartache is something that my son and I carry daily, seldom talking about it. Oh, we reminisce briefly in bits and pieces, but it remains, nevertheless.

The tears are against my eyelids as I page through several albums of when Rob and his little sister, Laurie, were very young. We had no idea that she would be dead at the age of seven. By the time I got to the album of her seventh birthday party, the tears were tuning up. However, I saw how illuminated she was, how joyous. She was dead in two months and she knew she was dying on the day the photos were taken.

Weeks later she would go on oxygen and then in July she was gone. And now the albums live on. I give her away to you over and over again, do I not? I have never shied away from writing about her or my broken heart. But hearts mend in time and life goes on.

But what about her older brother, Rob? He, like me, does a whole lot of suppressing and I totally understand why. No one talks about their dead child or only sibling. It just isn’t good form. So I give you these essays by way of keeping our family of four alive.

She and her father were the outgoing ones; Rob and I the introverted ones. It makes no difference whether anyone understands or not. At a counseling session that Bob and I had once, he said that Laurie was our spark plug. Truer words were never spoken.

I hate knowing that Rob will be the only survivor and left to deal with these losses alone at some point. Life can come down on you very hard. The scars are permanent and he has never wanted a family due to the medical history. I don’t blame him.

He and I are much alike, taking things one day at a time, one holiday at a time, until we will all one day just be memories in a scrapbook. Society discourages such sentences, but Rob and I have lived them.

But as I type, I also bear witness to the joy that little Laurie had. She scattered it in so many hearts while she was here on earth and that joy of hers also comes through my writing, just in a quiet way. I am a believer in love, no matter how long it may last or how briefly it comes to stay.

Vicki Woodyard