My Family

I am up late tonight. I am missing some very important people in my life right now and that is preventing me from sleeping. I think I will just write to see if I feel better.
I am 23 years old. I am moving now for the 4th time in 4 years. The closet I packed up today had three different boxes from three different funerals from each of my family members that have gone on before me. The first box is of my sisters funeral. She passed away five years before I was ever born. I never met her. In pictures we look exactly alike up until the point I passed her in age. I never knew my sister. I sat there and read all the kind words people I never even met written to my parents during their time of grief. I also looked at her obituary and remembered every single July and December we took flowers Momma and I arranged to place on her headstone. Then came my mothers funeral box. I do remember this one. This at the time was the most devistating event that I could have ever thought of to happen. I sat there and read all the encouraging words that people this time wrote to my father and me. I also remember feeling so numb for months after her death and just going through life. I remember stuffing my feelings so deep inside so noone ever knew how hard it was for me. This was a huge mistake. Feelings have a way of coming back out. The longer and more you stuff, the worse they are when they show up. I sat there today and read her obituary. How can anyone write a simple paragraph to sum up my mothers life? They just listed the facts, but that obituary did not show what a wonderful person my mother was. For weeks after her death, I had horrible nightmares about it. It got to the point I did not want to go to sleep. The next box I got to was my fathers. This was a man I always loved, but we were just becoming friends. He was a man that loved his family and loved to fish. He was a loner that needed his quiet time. It was difficult for him to trust anyone because in his life, most people used him as a stepping stone. When I found out he had cancer, I did not think I could handle going through all of that again. I did not realize how difficult it was having a parent with cancer and the emotional stress I was under. I had lived with it with my mother from the time I was eight. It was then that I realized the strain it puts on loved ones and I did not want to enter into that once again. We got daddy's diagnosis in May and he died in July of 2007. That was hard to watch my superhero daddy fade away while death took him daily. As I looked through his box today, I remember feeling so alone. I miss my daddy like crazy! I would do anything to have him hold me and tell me everything will work out one way or another. This coming from the man that spent six months figuring out if he wanted to buy a car or not and going over things over and over and over just to make sure. Although daddy often sucked at advice, I would still love to be able to tell him my problems just to know I had an ally in my corner no matter what! Once again, after his death, I stuffed my feelings. It hurt too bad to deal with it. I also didn't want anyone to know I was struggling so. For the past three years, neither did I. After daddy died, I jumped back into college. That kept me busy. This last year God stripped away all the distractions in my life. He dealt with me one on one. It took a while for me to get what He was doing. He was trying to heal my heart. Since my mother died, I had blamed God for taking her away from me. He took her away from me before my high school graduation, college graduation, wedding, and other important events that are so so difficult because I want her there. I blamed God for taking away my father. I was just developing a wonderful relationship with my father. I blamed God for leaving me all alone. My parents will never meet my future husband. They will never meet their grandchildren that they were both looking forward to but in no hurry to have them. This past year, God has healed me of all the blame and allowed me to feel and finally grieve for my family. I have a friend that when daddy died would gently ask me if I had started grieving yet. I always told her yes. I now realize that was a lie. I can now say I have. Now that my heart is open to these feelings again, I miss my parents more and more. I do have a wonderful support system through friends and family. That is something I thank God for each and every day. Even with them, they aren't there for me like my parents were. I miss having someone else in the house. I miss waking up on Saturday mornings to hear the tv and someone moving around in the kitchen. I miss not being alone. I guess that is the worst feeling in all of this is coming home to a house void of human beings. I was asked last year if I felt like an orphan. My immidiate response was no, I am an adult. I am not an orphan. The more I thought about it, the more I realize that is exactly what I feel like. Orphan. I do have to say I am extremely jealous of all the people I know that are my age and older that still have a parent or both around. You are the blessed ones in life. It angers me when people treat their parents like crap because they do not know what a blessing they themselves are distroying. I am missing my family like crazy right now. I often wonder what my parents think of my life right now. It was my mothers dream for me to graduate high school. She died the year before I did so. It was my fathers dream for my to graduate college. He died two years before I did so. The day I graduated from college was one of the hardest things I have ever done. As I walked in the procession into the auditorium, it took everything within me not to start bawling like a big baby. The day I got the news that I was hired as a teacher was pretty close up there too. I could not tell them that I finally am achieving not only my dreams but theirs as well. My children will never know their grandparents. They will never go fishing with my father nor do crafts and talk about Jesus with my mother. I know that my children will miss a blessing out of all that. That saddens my heart too. I wanted my mother to be there to help me set up my first classroom, to show her what I have accomplished. That wont happen. Last year, I asked my aunt if she would and I could instantly tell that wasn't her thing. I love my family and friends dearly, but nothing is like your own mother and father. I am simply missing my parents and lonely. I am not sure if I feel better or not, but at least I have gotten the ramblings in my head out of my head and into words. Hopefully now I can fall asleep.