Grief

It's been a long time since I posted on this blog, and much has happened, but I've been hesitant to come here and share my grief.  Grief is personal.  Grief is deep and often incomprehensible.  Grief will visit all of us sooner or later. 
My grief stems from the death of my oldest sister, Mary-jane, who lived in a small town in Kansas.  She had multiple medical problems, but her death was unexpected.  Sadly, her family didn't see the need to contact her sisters and brother until her final days, and this added to our grief.  Mary-jane suffered a massive stroke, and her family failed to recognize its seriousness and did nothing about contacting emergency medical technicians until it was too late.  She was unresponsive and had to be intubated and taken to the hospital in Topeka, where she was put on life support for about three days.  When the decision was made to remove her from life support, she suprisingly breathed on her own.  We were notified that she had died when in reality she had not.  However, her prognosis was very poor, and she ultimately did die in the early morning hours of April 5, about 36 hours after she was removed from life support.  She would have turned 65 on April 10. 
The rollercoaster ride of being told about her stroke, her prognosis, her 'death', discovering that she was still alive, and her actual death was exhausting and extremely emotionally draining.  I wouldn't wish this series of events on anyone; it was the most excruciating personal event I've endured in my 61 years.  With the knowledge of her death came the news that there would be no memorial service, no funeral, for my oldest sister -- and this added to the pain of her loss.  Her family's decision ruled, but it left her sisters and brother, who live scattered across the US, with no closure, no chance to say goodbye, and no opportunity to comfort each other.  The pain was real and deep.
How does one deal with loss?  Mary-jane was my sister, but she was a sibling, not a spouse.  Surely the loss of people in one's life has varying degrees of depth and pain, yet her death was -- and still is -- difficult to take.  In the days that followed her death, in an attempt to find closure outside the usual path of a funeral, I purchased a rose bush called "Beloved", planted it in a large pot outside where I can see it every day, and added a small statue of a reclining fairy that my daughter had given me.  Then I wrote a eulogy to her and shared it with my siblings.  Those two simple acts have aided me in closure of an event that seems so far removed from me yet extremely intimate.  I needed to see her to know that she truly is gone, but that will never happen.  My two other sisters also wrote eulogies and shared them with me, and thus we have remembered our oldest sister.  Sometimes the reality that she is dead hits me, and I want to cry again, and sometimes I do cry.  But even as I grieve my sister's death, I anticipate the birth of my son's third son, another grandchild.  My beautiful daughter-in-law is scheduled for a C-section on April 27 if she doesn't go into labor before then.  The thought of holding this new life in my arms comforts me. 
We all must die sooner or later.  For my sister, it seemed that it was sooner, but yet it was later than many people.  Remember that each day of life is a gift from God; embrace each day and run with it, loving those who may not be loveable all the time.  We have only the second that is the present.