Grief Thoughts

I know grief well. A little too well.

I often thought of my family as the six of us riding in our 1977 gray Impala station wagon for a vacation. My parents would be up front, my older brother and sister in the middle, and my younger sister and I relegated to what Mom called the "back back." In some ways it reminds me of the Game of Life plastic game pieces with the pink and blue people sticks that are added throughout the game.

After my dad died, over ten years after my younger sister's death, I realized that a third of my family was missing from the station wagon. And after my mom's death two weeks ago, the reality is that half my immediate family has died. As my sister Karen said, taking video at the cemetery on Saturday, the day after what would have been our sister Denise's 39th birthday, "Here's half our family at the cemetery."