Two years. That's how long the world has been Lisa-less. For those of you that didn't know her, she was my cousin. She was born six months to the day before me. Up until two years ago I didn't know life without her. To be in a world where she is not is so... odd. Not right. It feels very much like I'm waiting for her to get back from a faraway vacation.
My favorite picture of she and I was taken about eight years ago. She's wearing a tank top and shorts and I'm wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. I love it because it shows how different we are from each other.
During the summer my grandma would make us eggs for breakfast and Lisa would eat the yolk and I'd eat the white part. Symbolic of our unspoken agreement that although we were total and complete opposites in so many ways, we fit together perfectly.
I'm sure you have someone in your life that just GETS you. Gets everything about you. Gets why you feel the compulsion to count the number of words in a sentence, or the way you want to just SCREAM when the person next to you slurps the soup they're eating or how murderously annoying that relative is that always INSISTS on kissing you ON THE MOUTH or how they know to immediately eat the mushrooms out of the chinese food on your plate before you start gagging.
All it takes is a half-second glance out of the corner of your eye and they know EXACTLY what you're thinking. You become a firm believer in ESP when you have a connection like that with someone. We had an empathy for each other that can't be put into words.
Lisa spent her summers in Michigan. During those months we were inseparable. All good things must come to an end though and when the summer was over we'd begin the countdown until the next time we'd see each other.
There's roughly 1,272 miles from Grand Ledge, Michigan to Bradenton, Florida but distance was never really an issue with us. No matter how long we'd have to go without seeing each other we would always pick up right where we left off. Time could not touch us. No amount of miles would have mattered.
I am in no way exaggerating when I say when I was younger I got in trouble every single month when the phone bill came because Lisa and I would talk everyday for like, HOURS. I mean sure, I had plenty of other friends but no one could compare to her. We'd sit on the phone together in silence sometimes, one of us reading and the other playing a game on the computer.
Four months before Lisa died she came to Michigan. Patrick, Anna and I met her at the airport and from there we decided to grab some lunch. Mind you me, my children were just shy of being three and one year old at the time so you with kids know what those ages mean: chaos reigns wherever you go. That day was NO exception. It was a Mexican restaurant we chose and let me tell you, Anna was covered head to toe in her lunch-- she was basically a walking enchilada-- and Patrick was pretty much swinging from the light fixture hanging above us. The severity of how traumatic it can be to have small sleep-deprived children tends to fade as time goes on but this memory will forever be freshly imprinted in my mind. I wouldn't have blamed someone that had a tremendous amount of experience with young children to have gone RUNNING AND SCREAMING out of there.
I will never forget watching Lisa calmly pick Anna up from her highchair, cleaning her off and walking around the restaurant, cuddling her. Or the way she held Pat's hand walking out to the car and buckled him into his car seat.
She told my kids she loved them and there was no doubt in my mind she meant it. Although we lived across the country from each other, she loved them like an aunt would because she was just like a sister to me.
She had a heart of gold. When we were young I can remember being impressed by the way she cared and loved each person in her life. She had such a respect for other and was careful to not want to offend anyone.
Lisa, I know to say you were in unbearable pain would be a vast understatement. I don't understand why you went through what you did and the day you died the world got so dark. I miss you so much sometimes it feels like my heart's in a vice.
Lisa was ALWAYS the responsible, level-headed one of the two of us. She thought things out and analyzed. I, on the other hand, ran with whatever crazy idea flashed through my mind and sounded like a good time. We pulled each other in different directions until we met in the middle. A perfect balance.
She was always worried about how long I'd be grounded for whatever unbelievably insane plan I had concocted for us when she came to visit. Our evenings usually began with me spending forty-five minutes reassuring her that we wouldn't get caught (and even if we did I wouldn't care anyway because it'd be SO worth it). She was forever trying to keep me out of trouble.. and get into trouble with me at the same time.
We'd sneak out the basement window of my parent's house, throw my car into neutral and push it a ways down the driveway (which ALWAYS resulted in uncontrollable laughter.. I mean HELLO?! Pushing heavy machinery + trying to be quiet + being with your best friend = hysterical laughing) until we were far enough away from the house that Dad and Mom wouldn't jolt awake when I started the car. Then we'd drive off and the night belonged to us. (While I have no problem revealing our escape plan I feel as though 99.9% of what we did in the wee hours of those mornings should remain unknown as the stories haven't aged enough for my parents to think they're funny yet if they found out...) Needless to say, we were pretty wild, not wanting to waste a minute of the time we had together.
As the sun began to rise and light started splintering across the sky we'd slide back through the window to my room. Crawling upstairs an hour later with bloodshot eyes, we'd exchange smug smiles as my parents wondered out loud why we looked exhausted. In hindsight, I think they knew we had been up to no good but let us get away with murder because they knew how much we missed each other when we weren't together. (I could be COMPLETELY mistaken about them knowing though, so do me a favor and maybe don't mention this to them.)
I miss her. It's as simple and complicated as that.
I hate suicide.. everything about it. Aside from the obvious tragedy of losing Lisa, I hate that it strips her of her identity, reduces her to nothing but a number, a statistic.
Those of you who knew her, be honest, what do YOU think about when she crosses your mind? Do you think of her magnetic personality, the loyalty, her contagious laughter that seemed to take in everything around her, the empathy she had? Or do you think of the way she died?
I've read that worldwide there are approximately one million suicides per year. That comes out to someone ending their life every forty seconds. By 2020, it will be every twenty seconds.
Those statistics are a suckerpunch to the stomach. To think of the lives ending every few seconds of people that mean as much to other people as Lisa meant to me.
When someone you love dies, you expect the world to stop turning. Maybe it's because your world does stop turning or maybe it's becuse you can't imagine being in a world without them. You hold your head in your hands and brace yourself (For those of you that are Lost fans, you know when they time travel and there's the blinding light and headache-inducing noise? That's what it makes me think of.) You wait for gravity to fail and the Earth to turn inside-out. The most horrific thing, to me, about tragedy is the moment when you realize that life will keep going regardless.
Then there is nothing but emptiness. A cave has been carve in your heart that will never be filled.
I'm not really the violent type but when I hear someone describe suicide as a "selfish decision" I want to strangle them. Selfish?? Do you have ANY idea what it took to push them to end their life? What they had to endure? It's not that they wanted to die, it's that it was too painful to keep living. I don't expect anyone to understand that but take a moment to try and wrap your brain around what that would feel like. Remember that there is far more to the story than you know. Don't you dare judge her.
I'm not saying that I agree with it. I'm not saying I don't wish every day that Lisa hadn't made that choice. She backed every decision I ever made so if she is at peace, and I believe she is, I will deal with it. You can't change the past or anything that has happened to you and since there's no way to make some things better, she did what she thought she had to to end the pain. I miss her every day and although I have pleaded with God to make it all a bad dream, it is reality. She is no longer hurting and for that I am thankful.
I dream about her on a regular basis (which is actually a HUGE comfort), when I'm at a family gathering and someone tells a family story it's hard to not look around the room for her so we can roll our eyes and laugh about hearing it for the billionth time and I have even dialed the first numbers of her old phone number to stop mid-dialing, in horror, and realize I haven't come to grips with the fact she's gone.
In the end, she is always on my mind. Memories of her fly at me daily in a Tazmanian-Devil-whirlwind kind of way and suddenly it's like she's with me. She visits me in swirls of matching ladybug tattoes, code names for virtually everyone we knew, our dream of being the crazy cat ladies of the town, living together in a creepy old mansion when we're old, unprecedented memories together and of course, a mutual love of raspberries, to name a few.
Whether you want it to or not, life goes on. Even though she is gone I incorporate her into my life as much as possible. No, there will be no new memories but there are the old ones and thankfully, there are a lot of them to relive. There are pictures of her throughout my house that remind me of good times and her laughter. My baby girl Ella has the middle name "Marie," in remembrance of her. Every year on December 4, the anniversary of her death, the kids and I buy twenty-five balloons to commemorate each year of her short life and I tell them about her as we let the balloons go into the sky. On her birthday, September 2, I watch "Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken," a movie we were obsessed with when we were younger. Through those memories, her memory is very much alive.
She is gone but her memories are not.
It's been two years, Lisa. I love you. I miss you. Forever.
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