This past year has been very different for me, filled with great sorrow, but also great peace. I sometimes give names to certain years, like 2011 I had dubbed the Year of the Butterfly, because it was a year in which I transformed more fully into myself, the person I was meant to be. This year, 2014, has seemed to me to be the Year of Reconciliation. It’s been a year of having several fractured relationships restored to me, borne in large part out of the death of my brother.
When Steven died back in February of this year, I cannot tell you the pain and grief I experienced. I’ve written about our relationship on my blog, East Coast Day Shift. He and I were always very close growing up, and though we had some ups and downs in our relationship as adults, we were always close enough that I still felt like we could talk to each other about anything.
Steven’s death was sudden and unexpected. Our entire family was devastated. He was such a funny, loving, vibrant person, and loved deeply by us all. I don’t think he realized just how much each of us loved him, but I am so very glad that my last words to him, a week or so before he died, were that I love him.
I had been living in Virginia for two years by the time he died. In early 2012, soon after I moved, several very important family relationships had been broken and destroyed. A relationship with one friend had deteriorated a year later, in 2013. And there was another friendship that had disintegrated a couple of years before I ever moved. Those two were friendships that had meant a lot to me.
Almost a year after I moved, two of the family relationships, the two most important ones, had started to be rebuilt. These people reached out to me, apologizing, and a tentative and delicate healing process began. Through important communication, hurts started to lessen, and I was able to forgive and be forgiven.
There were times during this process that I felt it was two steps forward and one step back. I frequently dealt with my memories of what had been done, and I prayed for God to help me through this, to be able to truly and completely forgive.
I feared that bitterness would set in, and knowing what a trap that is, I’ve always prayed for God to help me keep it out of my heart. Letting wrongs fester without repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation is one of the surest roads that leads to bitterness.
While one of those relationships recovered fairly easily and quickly, the second was more difficult and took longer. But through earnest prayer, time, patience, and even more prayer…restoration was complete and I knew that I had truly forgiven.
The other family relationships remained inactive and broken. I spent two years feeling hurt, confused, and defeated. But if someone has wronged you and then cuts off all contact and communication with you, the most you can do is pray and leave it in God’s hands. So that is what I did, and went on with my life. There was nothing more that *I* could do.
But then while up in Massachusetts for my brother’s funeral this year, something amazing happened. I sat in the church beside my grieving mother, waiting for Steven’s service to begin, nervously wondering what would happen when the people involved with the other broken relationships arrived and saw me. I envisioned angry glares and nasty whisperings, if not outright snubs and rude remarks.
However, something entirely different, and as I said, amazing, occurred. Those people came up to me, smiling, and before I realized what was happening, were hugging me and asking me how I was. To say I was astounded is an understatement. I almost didn’t even know what to say, I was so surprised.
Others with whom I and the rest of my parents and siblings had lost contact years earlier, some family and some friends, came to the funeral, and any slights, disagreements, or differences were set aside as we gathered together in our common grief and love of my brother. I watched as everyone hugged, cried together, and talked.
It was as if all the time that had passed and everything negative in all of these relationships just dissolved, and all that was left was…people.
And love.
And what I realized then, and in the days and weeks that followed, was that we all had come to a place where we realized, through Steven’s death, that life is precious, so very precious, and it can change in devastating ways when we least expect it.
I never imagined that Steven would die at the age of 46. I never imagined that we wouldn’t grow old together. I never imagined that we’d never talk about recipes, or complain about jobs, or vent about some annoying situation, or share our children’s accomplishments, or laugh at the funny things in life.
I envisioned us being wrinkled and wizened with creaky joints, teasing each other, and with jokes volleying back and forth that cracked us up and made us almost pee ourselves in our silliness. And then say “I love you!” as we parted or hung up the phone.
But Steven died. And our world came crashing down around us, leaving us shaken, and our hearts broken into a million shards.
Without realizing it, we all had contemplated how quickly life can change, leaving us in the dust, shaking our heads and wondering who pulled the rug out from under us.
Without realizing it, Steven would teach us all about the fragility of life, and make us examine and confront the worst in ourselves, and decide that nothing in this life…nothing…is worth coming between two people. He made us understand the value of life, and the most important things in life: people.
Yes, our jobs are important; we need to have money to live on and provide for our family’s needs. Our children need education, however we choose to make that happen. And we need to take care of our homes, and cook meals, and do the shopping, and run errands, and take our pets to the vet, and any other of the myriad responsibilities we have in life.
But maybe we ought to deem those things “necessary.” When it comes down to it, in the moment between one breath, and the last exhale…the most important things in life are people. The relationships we have with the people in our lives.
The phone calls we share, the snuggle in bed watching a movie together, the Thanksgiving meal with the in-laws, the lunch out with a sister, the caress of the baby’s cheek during nursing, and the coming to every little league game he has or karate lesson she goes to. The birthday celebration, the church baptism, the cleaning of that sick friend’s house, the video-chat with the one across the country, the help with a math problem, the shared confidence, and the siblings meeting at mom’s house for a summer cookout.
There is no end to that list; people, and our relationships with them, are what matter.
And that was the driving force behind what happened in all of our lives when Steven died. So many relationships were healed, renewed, and restored, through the death of a man we loved.
I don’t think Steven could have ever realized the impact that his life, and his death, had on this world.
Testament to the fact that out of great sorrow can come an abundance of joy and peace.
PS: Those two friendships I had that had broken down? Restored, and I am so thankful and blessed to have those two friends in my life. I’m so blessed for this Year of Reconciliation.