The Swirly.

I seem to think about you the most when I am driving, mainly because I spend what seems to be half my life driving and because it is one of the few times that my mind has time to be alone. We drove down to Charleston Thursday for a wedding that Jared is in, so while Jared and Reagan slept, I had a lot of a time to think of you. I kept searching my memories for some profound, life altering moment that shared with you but the one memory that kept surfacing was the time that Garrett gave you a swirly. I'm not sure if it was the knowledge that I would be seeing Garrett at some point in this trip or I subconsciously I wanted to laugh, but the image of you getting your head dumped in a flushing toilet kept rearing up. 

I'm not even sure I can accurately remember where this hysterical incident occurred, but I want to say it happened on Pennwaller Cove. I remember you doing what you seemed to do best, pestering Garrett, and working very hard at it, when he threatened you with a swirly. You had never heard of a swirly and kept inquiring as to what it involved. I'm not sure what provoked you to keep up your antics; whether your curiosity fueled you forward or that you even really cared because to you, any attention was better than none. But when he finally had enough of your insistent annoyance and deemed you worthy, you finally got to see, first hand, the wrath of the swirly. 

While Jared and I sat, with tears of laughter streaming down our faces, unable to control our amusement and laughter, Garrett took you into the bathroom and turned you upside down and dumped you, head first, into the swirling abyss of our guest bathroom toilet. 

While this event was hilarious in itself, the look on your we face, covered in the dripping mess of your hair, was nothing short of priceless. In all of your shock, horror, and disgust at the series of events that had just unfolded upon you by a beloved brother, you still found it in your good spirit to join in the chorus of laughter that erupted from 103 Pennwaller Cove. I remember being bewildered and a little proud of your uncanny ability to receive our unending abuse with such grace and poise and wishing that I could have just a little of your carefree, take-it-or-leave-it spirit. 

After you died, I was thinking about how I remember always trying to unveil the harsh realities of the world to you while you were living and thinking now, after you were gone, how silly I was for trying to break the spirit that truly made you who you were. I thought about how wrong I was to do that and that I should have worked harder to preserve that attitude throughout your life, one that was untouched by bitterness and injustice. 

If only more people could think the way that you did, what a wonderful place the world could be. Luckily, you never took anything I did or said too seriously and stayed true to yourself. All the while I was trying to teach you and, in fact, you taught me one of the greatest lessons I will ever learn. 

I would never admit this to you but I am glad that you never listened to me. 

                           
  

                        

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. 

Aren't we all a little insane at times?

Reagan had her guitar duet with her instructor in church yesterday (she did amazing!). While I was waiting for church to begin, sitting in the pew in the empty sanctuary, I thought: Chelsea would have come to watch Reagan play, if she could have. As I was reflecting on this thought I imagined what you would say at the end of her performance. It would have been some sort of criticism about the way that she was sitting or the way that she was holding her guitar, it would have angered her to the core and it would end with you laughing at me saying, “What? I can’t help it she is over sensitive,” and Reagan crossing her arms and pouting. I would have said something to the effect of, “Chelsea, she is 7 and you are 19, please act your age and just leave her alone.” This thought was the first time that I had realized that you would have been sitting right there next to me, but you weren’t. It was the first realization that you would never again sit next to me in church, or anywhere for that matter.

Is this what that Keebler-Ross lady calls acceptance? I think it should be called “A Punch in the Gut.” The stages of grief should be redefined to include this exact step. The steps would go: 1) Denial, 2) Anger, 3) Bargaining, 4) Depression, 5) A Punch in the Gut. So when you are done with your heart wrenching sadness and pain, you feel the wind rush from your lungs when you suddenly realize that you are starting a life without your loved one, this sensation would feel much like someone punching you in the stomach. To me, that causes you to start the whole damn process over again, so it becomes this vicious cycle of highs and lows until you are either so insane that you learn to mask it or your husband decides to lock you away in a institute because you are about to drive him insane. Either way, there is a lot of insanity floating around.

I was thinking about the time (one of many) that I thought you had gone insane. You were in middle school at White County Middle and had just started a new year, I believe 6^th grade. You had just moved up to Cleveland from Savannah to live with your dad for a bit so you didn’t really know any of the kids at school. Once you get to school the staff herds you in to the cafeteria to be put into “holding” until the bell rings, signaling for the all clear to get to class and the day to begin. I am not sure to this day what could have provoked you to think that doing this was a good idea but you started banging your head on the cafeteria table in order to….make friends? Of all of the socially insane ways to make friends, this one might actually make the top ten best. I’m not really sure what kind of friends you were trying to attract but either way, your plight failed, and you were immediately ushered to the counselor’s office. Your father was contacted and so began an era. Your dad told me that for Christmas that year he was going to get you a pillow so when you decided to bang your head on a table to make friends at least you would have a soft place to land it. You, somehow, ended up making quite a gaggle of friends that year, regardless of your socially insane behavior in the beginning. I guess you always knew how to make a scene in the best possible way.

The dictionary defines insanity as the condition of being insane; a derangement of the mind. I truly believe that you were insane, especially in the above mentioned situation, but I also think that your insanity was an attribute to your intense uniqueness. Of course your inability to filter your words, smart mouth, and your dry sarcasm were also huge parts of your personality, but they are all characteristics that made you, you. 

Though sometimes it was difficult to tolerate, your personality could fill a room to capacity. 

I feel like we all go a little insane at times, just a rare few of us have the courage to show it off with pride in such a public manner. 

"Don't let the sun go down upon your anger."

During a recent instant message conversation with our mother she told me that she "is still angry with God". While the very idea of our mother's faith quaking, gives me the greatest heartache, I can’t say that I blame her. In the moment I replied with, “and you have every right to be”, and while I am uncertain if this was the correct route to take, it is what I felt in my heart. While I can only hope that “this too shall pass”, it got me to thinking of who I could find to deter her from placing the blame on God. The answer was as heartbreaking as the question, nobody. There isn’t a horrible person to put on trial for your murder, there isn’t someone to press charges on for driving under the influence, your car didn’t have some sudden malfunction that we were unaware of, we couldn’t even blame you for driving with less than perfect inhibitions or without a seatbelt. So who do we blame? Or do we blame anyone at all? Or perhaps we are just left to accept it for exactly what it was a callous, unexpected accident.

I started thinking about the trip we took to Savannah over Labor Day weekend and how we didn’t speak to each other at the whole way back to your dorm. I had wanted to get an early start back to Cleveland but you amazingly had “forgotten” I had ever mentioned that to you. You wanted time to go say bye to your boyfriend at his work before we left and I guess I was making that task more difficult on you. So you pitched a big fit and called me a bunch of nasty, profane names and refused to speak to me the whole way home. What are sisters for? So instead of talking we went to battle with the radio, with you picking one and blasting it, then me picking one and blasting it. By the time we reached your dorm in Kennesaw, we were laughing so hard about how we literally had a three and half hour sing off and not once did we say anything to each other. Good times.

Mom ended her instant message about her resentment towards God with me saying, “I don’t want to be angry with God because I am afraid he won’t let me come to Heaven and then I will never get to see Chelsea again.” I kind of giggled to myself and wrote back to her that if all we had to do was be angry with God to get rejected from Heaven then I had NO chance of getting in and might as well give up now.

I started thinking about one of the books that I took from your room because it was one of our favorites, Little Women. At one point, Jo gets so angry at her younger sister, Amy, for burning her novel during one of her fits. Marmee, in trying to alleviate Jo’s rage says to her, “It is a very great loss and you have every right to be put out but don’t let the sun go down upon your anger, forgive each other and start again tomorrow.” In the last few weeks this has become one of my favorite quotes because it speaks volumes to how one lives life after the loss of a loved one. Day by day we have to learn to live all over again, learn to forgive, learn to let go, and learn to hope.

I can only hope that our mom's anger subsides but if it doesn't maybe she can find a great song to blast instead.

"Hey, I'm not too proud to grovel."

I was texting with your idol, Paula, the other day. I had to ask her to deliver a copy of your death certificate to the Dean of Women at North Georgia College, a task I hated having to ask of her, but of course, she gladly accepted.

Talking to her reminded me of a trip to Savannah that we took over Labor Day weekend last year. We somehow thought it would be a good idea for me to come and pick you up in Kennesaw after work, but after sitting in a line of traffic that was literally stopped in its tracks for like an hour, I quickly realized we had not thought this through very well. After picking you up at your dorm, which reminded of a prison in a third world country, we were finally able to get through Atlanta and on our way.

We got hungry and needed a supply of coffee to help fuel the rest of the trip, so at about 10:00 we stopped in Macon at McDonald’s. You ordered your usual chicken nugget Happy Meal, but decided on asking for a boy’s toy, just to switch it up and throw off the drive through window attendant. I ordered a basic iced vanilla coffee and a grilled chicken snack wrap but announced that I would be stealing some of Reagan’s fries. The poor girl at the window must have been running on even less sleep than us because after 4 tries, one “please pull up and wait”, and an unpleasant trip inside, I finally got my chicken wrap, although it wasn’t until I pulled away that I realized it was fried, not grilled, and my iced coffee, that ended actually being hazelnut and not vanilla. Once we got back on the road you told me the devastating news that Vince and Paula had broken up (Vince is our brother and Paula was his girlfriend of several years, for whom Chelsea would often “stalk”). I am not sure if it was the delirium of the tedious trip, complete lack of sleep, or the extra sugar from the “nonfat, vanilla” coffee I had just received, but we began plotting ways to win her back. We kept taking turns pretending to be Paula while the other would act out a dramatic plea to “Please, come back to us!” We thought a good course of action would be to ask, “Was it something we said? Or did?” and then promptly send her some flowers professing our undying love and our unrelenting devotion. We laughed so hard at ourselves, literally thinking we could have very well been, in that moment, the two funniest people on the planet.

I remember then discussing how creeped out both Paula and Vince would be if we went through with our plot. You looked up from your phone and with the glow of the screen letting just enough light radiate your face you told me that you were not below begging and that you would stop at nothing to win her back whether Vince liked it or not. I believe your exact words were “Hey, I am not too proud to grovel.” We then continued on with our “diabolical” laugh.

I told Paula at your Memorial Service how much you loved her, so much so, that it kind of became a little obsessive and strange ;).

It is strange that the memory of that night has been one of the strongest I remember sharing with you. It wasn’t like that was the first time we had ridden a long distance together in a car or even the first time we plotted against someone for our own selfish purposes (we did that to Mom all the time). For some reason, that night, under the stars, on the most boring road on the planet, buried under a mess of fast food wrappers, slim jims, and coffee cups, exhausted, delirious, and on the brink of insanity, we started REALLY seeing each other for the first time, not as just sisters, but friends as well (even though I’m pretty sure I can hear you saying now, “No, Holly, why would ever be friends, you are too old”). So I will say that I know that I truly began to respect the women you had become and for the first time I was really excited about the years of friendship we could build together.

Well at least I got that night. Thank you.

When you "stalked" Paula in Hilton Head.

Poor Paula, ever smiling.

Vince being creepy with Paula.

Hindsight is 20/20

This morning I was listening to the radio and one of the girls on there, probably about my age, was talking about her 15 year old sister and how she sometimes thinks of her sister as more of a daughter than a sister because of the age difference. She talked about how she nagged her about keeping her life on track, staying away from boys, getting good grades, and making smart choices. She had gone so far as to prevent her from having a Facebook page. She was asking for advice about whether or not she was being too motherly and crossing a fine line.

Listening to her talk really hit close to home because it got me thinking about our own unconventional relationship and the last time I talked to you. Our last conversation took place on Christmas day at our Grandmother’s house and we (Vince included) had gotten in a fight over the very thing that this girl on the radio was talking about. The three of us went to blows because I was “too motherly” to the two of you and neither of you cared for it. I stormed out of our grandmother’s house that day and never looked back. We never got a chance to speak again.

It has taken me nearly three weeks to blog about this incident or even speak of it. I was so afraid that if I spoke of it and tried to say the words out loud that 1) I would not be able to even choke my way through it and 2) it would make it real, which it is, unfortunately.

Many of your friends, those that knew of our falling out, have approached me in the last weeks giving me words of comfort, most of them saying that it wasn’t on your mind and that you had long ago let it go. One of your friends told me that it didn’t have any effect on you and that it was not even a glimpse in your thoughts. I laughed at this thinking, “Of course it wasn’t, nothing I ever said had any effect on Chelsea.” It still doesn’t take away from the fact that I never let it go and it was and always will be forever on my mind. I can only hope that you knew that everything I have ever done or said to you was out of unwavering love.

You once came to me, late, on a Sunday night late in October last year hysterically crying and completely devastated over a recent incident that had wreaked havoc on your young life. I was in my bathroom drying my hair and you collapsed on the toilet seat and put your face in your hands. You were so worried that this one tiny bleep on the radar of your life was potentially going to leave you branded with a scarlet letter for life. I believe your exact words were, “My life is ruined.” I started laughing so hard at this statement that you started getting even more upset and angry. I finally pulled myself together and explained to you that in the ways of your naïve, teenage existence I could completely understand how you would think that because I could still recall thinking that same thing NUMEROUS times in my life as a teenager. Then I explained to you that you were so much more than that one incident; that it will never define who you are or you will become. I told you that one day, not long from now; you will look back at this time in your life and laugh so hard it would bring tears to eyes.  I also told you to look around, that you were not, nor ever would be alone; that you had a family that loved you immensely and passionately. I asked to see what lengths your father and mother had gone to to ensure your every happiness and to erase this incident from your memory. That no matter what your friends ever did or said, we would be standing beside you and nothing would ever change that. I told you that in the end your family is the only thing that will matter anyway, that while friends step in and out of your life, your family will be there forever. I meant every word of what I said.

You told me on the way out of my house that night that you felt better about the situation, I don’t really know if you actually did or you were just saying that, but I knew that soon that whole mess would be behind you.

If I knew now what I knew then. 

My shorts are not that short!

The weather has been absolutely amazing the last week or so, which got me to thinking today: "It would be about time for Chelsea to be pulling out those awful shorts". It was like you chose the smallest piece of fabric in your wardrobe and as soon as the weather got warm...out they came. I'm not even sure that those things could even constitute for clothing and should actually be categorized more as swimwear or underwear even. I would always ask if you actually paid money for your shorts and you would always reply, "My shorts are not that short! You are just old!". I would take being old any day over trying to squeeze my body, which has years of abuse and pregnancy wear on it, into that tiny bit of fabric. Honestly, I just couldn't have imagined having to ride long distance in them, walk long periods in them, or even bend over in them! Yikes! But that was you, always doing what you wanted and not taking anybody's criticism or judgement.

I remember last year (before the picture taken below was taken) you had been at the house in a pair of black "shorts" and said that you were going to take a shower before dinner. Garrett, Vince, and I spent about 20 minutes picking on you and asking you to please change your shorts before you came back. So, in the spirit of rebelling and sarcasm, you came back for dinner in the denim version of the same pair of "shorts". We all laughed and I said, "Chelsea, we asked you to change your shorts!", you simply replied with the biggest, sarcastic smile on your face, "I did, these are different." So you.

I was in the grocery store a few days ago with Reagan and as we rounded a corner I saw a girl at the other end of the aisle that looked exactly like you, or at least from a distance. As I started walking towards the other end of the aisle trying to get a closer look, she took off around the opposite corner. Even though I didn't need anything down the pet aisle, I found myself following her. As I continued to inconspicuously stalk this poor girl around the store just really wanting a closer look, I thought to myself, "Chelsea is probably making fun of me right now for being a creeper." When I finally caught up to her I realized that only one thing really struck me in that moment and that was, "My Lord, there are other parents in the world that allow their daughter to run around in those same, God-awful shorts?" I kind of giggled to myself which made her look up at me. The moments that followed can only be described as a series of very awkward events that ensue after you have been busted staring at someone, from which I panicked and fled the scene. I remember having a conversation with you on the way down to Savannah last year about those awkward "I just got busted staring at you and now I don't know what to do" moments; we laughed so hard. I will so miss seeing your unreasonably short shorts this summer, but because of you I laughed the whole way home from the grocery store that day.

Which makes me think: I wonder if they have a dress code in Heaven? I bet you don't follow it if there is one.

This was the family photo we took the night of the above conversation...not long after  she "changed".