Moving on

Clay and I got back home from Kansas on Monday afternoon, but to understand everything that has happened this month I need to go back to the first of May when my oldest sister suffered a massive seizure that took her life. The logistics were complicated and people needed time to make travel arrangements, so there was first a trip to Kentucky last week where we had a very informal gathering of friends, family, and former colleagues to say goodbye and share memories of my sister Kate. It was quite wonderful, if you can use that word for such an occasion, but it was touching to see so many people turn out who knew Kate and had so many delightful and telling things to say about her.

That event was followed up this week by a trip to Kansas, where we gathered at a small town cemetery on a beautiful spring day of Memorial Day weekend. Much like the Kentucky gathering, it was turnout of family and friends from many different aspects and eras of Kate's life. The location was the cemetery for Delphos, Kansas, where both of my parents are buried, along with my maternal grandparents, great-grandparents, and many of my maternal relatives are buried. It's not far from a plot of land that was still owned by Kate, which had been homesteaded by our ancestors after the Civil War. Our family's roots run deep in that rich prairie soil. 

We had gone out to the cemetery the day before the planned gathering and burial to check things out and tidy up, pull weeds, place some flowers, etc. There wasn't much that needed doing, so we had plenty of time and opportunity to walk around. As I was walking over to the small mausoleum where my grandparents were interred, I found a snakeskin. It must have been pretty recently shed because it was lying on grass that had been recently mowed. Kate liked snakes and kept them in her younger years, including a boa constrictor that she had throughout high school and at least part of her college years. I thought that the find was at least symbolic even if only coincidental, so I picked it up and brought it over to the family plot where Kate's ashes were to be buried the next day. 

I had been struggling with what to say that next day and in the middle of the night my thoughts coalesced around that snakeskin. It was certainly reminiscent of Kate, but it was also symbolic of what we were doing there. That empty and fragile skin was not the snake itself, the snake had moved on. Similarly, the remains we buried that next day were not my sister Kate, because Kate too had moved on. 

What she left behind was a lot of devastated family and friends. It was a shock and it was also a huge loss to everyone individually. I had been struggling with it for a couple of weeks when I finally happened to see a Facebook post of a poem by an Australian poet, Courtney Peppernell. It brought me some degree of peace and acceptance because it's an apt literary analogy and it sounded very much like something Kate would say: 

You can't skip chapters, that's not how life works. You have to read every line, meet every character. You won't enjoy all of it. Hell, some chapters will make you cry for weeks. You will read things you don't want to read, you will have moments when you don't want the pages to end. But you have to keep going. Stories keep the world revolving. Love yours, don't miss out.

Kate left us far too soon, but she will always be remembered with love and laughter.

I read the poem and a less elegant version of the snakeskin analogy to the people who gathered at the cemetery that day. My sister Paula spoke as well, and then many others came forward and shared their memories and stories about what Kate had meant to them. Kim, her spouse, had the final words and then we all shared a toast, with one of Kate's most recent favorite bourbons (or the drink of everyone's choice).

It was a rough month of May, but we all felt good about it, in the sense that we think Kate would have approved and Kate had pretty high standards about such things. I haven't spoken much about this until now because I couldn't. It took quite a while for my thoughts to settle and be presentable. I had written a post (May Memorials) after the Kentucky trip but I didn't share it on Facebook because I wasn't ready. I'm not sure I'm ready yet, but we all have to find a way to move on to the next chapter. For me, that means trying to put my thoughts into words. 

Kim throwing a disc for Pixel and Reka.

(I like this picture of all three of them.)

Kim and Reka

This is me and my sister Paula.

That little bird sitting on the bench had a nest full of babies underneath

a daylily tucked behind my aunt and uncle's nearby grave marker.

For me, this song captures that "moving on" spirit.