I grew up with many brothers and sisters. My older brother and I practically raised the younger ones as mom always had her hands full with a baby or two. We fed them, bathed them, babysat, took them out to play or to run errands.
I loved and cared for my siblings very deeply.
Then in my mid 20's I left them all, abandoned and without warning, in order to save myself from my incestuous father.
The hardest part, easily, was leaving my brothers and sisters. By far, the most painful part of my escape.
Approximately ten years later, I would return for brief visits, for funerals mostly, as the grandparents started dying and required ceremony.
And somewhere along the way, or maybe it's always been there, I have harbored a small flicker of flame, a hope that my constant, though submerged and hidden way in the back, love for them would be requited, returned and reunited.
It felt like I was standing in a rainstorm, atop the greatest hill, amidst a lightning storm and praying for a bolt from the blue to strike my perpetually outstretched, pleading hand. The odds of that happening dwindled with each passing year. The yearning for days of old when I loved them and they loved me were completely gone. Rainstorm after rainstorm, year after year, and decade after decade proved, I was completely alone atop the hill.
And I have been faithfully standing there, until now.
It feels like I have been ferociously clinging on to dead people that live in my chest, in the place where all that former love and current hope lived. How can I ever move on if my chest is full of the dead, the gone, the ones who have chosen to move on without me?
Thus, I have made a choice. I'm going to let the dead people, the hopes and the dreams go.
One by one, I have acknowledged the great love I have shared with each sibling. I have expressed my great gratitude for having been a part of their lives for those many years. I have forgiven them for forsaking me as I ask for their forgiveness in abandoning them. I was truly blessed to have loved and been a part of each one of their early lives. It is over now.
They have moved on. And I respect that.
I'm not going to hold onto that hope anymore. It just takes up too much space, space that can better be used for loving and being loved in the present.
I do thank them. I did love them so. I am grateful.
This sister is moving on. No more dead people in my chest, only life and love.
