Grace...or lack there of.

I didn’t sleep very well last night. I haven’t slept really well in a lot of nights but last night I dreamt about you. In the dream you came to me in the middle of the night and you were trying to get me to remember this telephone number. I couldn’t seem to remember it for the life of me you kept saying, “it is a lot like that song, ‘867-5309’, but the number is ‘867-5662’”. So I kept singing it over and over again. I would be singing it and mess up and you would poke me in the rib cage, letting me know that I didn’t have it right, but the more that I sang it the more I kept getting the numbers mixed up. When I woke up this morning I was so angry at myself because it was so important to you that I remember that number and I couldn’t remember it, even with the song. I have literally been angry all morning and I just can’t seem to shake this feeling of complete failure, like I have absolutely let you down when you needed me the most.

After a rough two hours at work, I decided to close my door and listen to the song that the North Georgia Singers (your chorus group at NGCSU) dedicated to you at a recital, which you would have been at, at the Holly Theater the other night. The name of the song is Omnia Sol. I was immediately brought back to the dark of the theater and the beautiful song that those kids performed, when I was listening to it at work. I was curious about the words and lyrics, so I looked them up. The chorus goes: “O stay your soul and leave my heart, O stay your hand; the journey may be long! And when we part, and sorrow can’t be sway’d…Remember when, and let your heart be staid.” I had a pretty good idea of what staid meant, but I looked it up in Webster’s just to be on the safe side, and according to Ol’ Webster it means: marked by settled sedateness and often prim self-restraint. When I thought about it, it actually sounds like they are asking us to keep our heart doped up in a drug induced coma so as to mask our sorrow and uncertainess, because it is our sorrow that makes them so uncomfortable (I’ve always been the half glass full type of gal ;).

During the North Georgia Singers performance the other night, Jared leaned over to me and said, “I wonder if they were intelligent enough to put Chelsea on the risers and if they did, I wonder how many times she tripped coming down and walking up those things?” We both laughed out loud and inappropriately because we got a few stares. I was thinking in my head that they would have had to put you on high risers because you were so short no one in the audience could have seen you otherwise. Then I started thinking about the Polar Bear Swim at Lake Lanier two years ago. It was cold and rainy so the dock was super slick. When it came your turn to jump in, you took off running full blast, ended up slipping on the edge of the dock, and did the most ferocious belly flop into the lake. That was the most hilarious thing to see you do in front of all of those people! It reminded of a tweet I saw of yours the other day:

I laughed so hard when I read this because of the thousands of times I remember you tripping and/or falling in public. You were always so worried about someone seeing you do it. It is like a genetic disease in our family…lackofgracitis. Mom has it, you had it, and Reagan has it. I think it gets worse with each generation too.

As I was sitting there in the audience listening to these kids sing, I wondered how many of their lives were touched by you. I wondered how many of their lives were rocked and shattered by the news of your death. I wondered how many of them felt the need to sing along to every song on the radio and drive their families crazy. I giggled to myself and thought that they probably all did. Then I found myself searching the crowds of faces to see if I recognized any of them from the services all the while thinking, “Why does it matter?” I know it seems really strange but I find myself wanting to delve deep into your life, like I am searching for the person that was my sister. I just can’t enough knowledge about how you lived every day and I somehow feel like meeting your friends, reading the same books, listening to the same music, and going to the same places that you did are all going to bring me closer to you.

After that dream last night, I think I am just trying so desperately to hold on to you, specifically, your life. I think that I am afraid that if I stop trying to pursue your favorite people, places, and things that I will somehow lose sight of who you were.

But we both know who you were. The girl that fell down stairs and ran into parked cars and slept a lot and banged her head on tables. You are my sister and hopefully I can ‘let my heart be staid’.

This is Chelsea (far right) immediately after the award winning face plant.