Easily Excitable

Every year, I write a post in honor of my sister, Caroline. Typically, I do this on the anniversary week of her death.  

Now, that first year? That ‘in memoriam’ wasn’t difficult to write: it was difficult to control. It was raw, nothing but emotion. 

As time has passed, it’s gotten a little harder to write this every year. I’ve started this writing  multiple times, then scrapped and adjusted. 

I guess the difference is, now, I actually care if this writing is good, rather than just fire hosing all my feelings onto a Google Doc. 

What makes it hard comes down to the fact that I want to write something that Caroline would enjoy and appreciate. 

And then, you know what I realized? 

Caroline wouldn’t be reading my writing, period. 

Her thought on the matter would likely be, “I’ve heard your voice every day of my life, and I never cared what you thought in the first place.”

That’s my sister. She was good at bringing me down a peg. One of her favorite things to do when I was sitting down, wearing a bathing suit, was grabbing the bottom of my stomach and saying, “Look at that pudge.”

Rare is the one who has both siblings and pride.

It’s been five years since Caroline died. 

The newest Meadows generation- the children of my generation- ask questions about Caroline. Their parents have educated them on the family tree, so they’re still trying to understand how everyone fits together.

The nieces, nephews, and cousins haven’t asked this, but one day, if they ask what Caroline was like, here’s what I’ll say: 

If she loved you, she would hit you, but she would hit your enemies much, much harder. 

Caroline was hilarious, tender, kind, brash, anger-inducing, and impatient when it came to pretension.

If more people were like her, we would all know too well what others thought of us: there would be more fist fights as a result, but we would spend a lot less time dancing around the truth. 

She was a good friend and a great cook; she was a loving mom and a hard worker.

She was great at doing hair and would have made for a great stylist.

I love my sister. 

Without her, there is no me: without her, there is no Walker, either.

Such is the gauntlet of siblinghood.  

What a gift our siblings are-those who remember getting Popsicles from the refrigerator in Pa’s tool shed (it always smelled like gas), sitting in the car while Momma picked blackberries on the side of the road (we didn’t suffer- we had milk and Blueberry Poptarts), and riding in Daddy’s trailer on top of a load of cotton (it wasn’t legal then, and it’s not legal now, but that’s the beauty of living in a small, rural town).

There are phrases, meals, and smells you could mention to your siblings, and they would be the only ones on earth who would understand exactly what you mean.

Siblings also teach us how to handle adversity: i.e., ‘suck it up.’ 

They will throw a remote at your head, only to make contact and, as a result, nurture you and hush your crying with, “Don’t tell Momma. That didn’t even hurt.” 

This year, Caroline would be 30. 

I knew that, as we’re 13 months apart, but I didn’t fully realize it until Zayden was trying to figure out how old I am. 

“Well,” he said. “Caroline is 30, so you’re…35?”

Okay, maybe we just THOUGHT math was his strong suit. 

Much like Zayden’s tracking my age based on Caroline’s, I kind of ‘track’ my life in relation to her death. There are those things pre- and post-. Life is different, and we as people and as a family are different, too.

This has become a yearly tradition: one in which I attempt to explain what grief has taught me this year. 

This year, there’s been a picture in my mind. 

This mental image is a scale. Not like a scale that tells you to cut back on the queso and complimentary basket of chips: rather, it’s one of those scales with a plate on either side. 

It’s a balancing scale, according to Google. 

I’ve never really had words for it, but I think we’ve been living with that scale for five years. 

On one side, there is loss and all of its sadness: and on the other side, there is gain and, along with it, incredible joy. 

The loss? My sister is no longer here, on this side of heaven. 

How we miss her.

Her death, from my human perspective, was untimely. 

In the months afterward, I found myself saying to God: “But she wanted more.”

More time with Zayden, more time with us, more time here. 

To be honest, I felt like God didn’t give her and, in turn, us, a fair shake: I’ve told Him as much.

God can see past the petulant-child attitude to understand my heart behind my prayers. 

That kind of heartache brings along with it a sense of helplessness. 

Sorrow is the thing where everything feels raw to the touch: when everything hurts, the natural inclination is to recoil from feeling too much. 

Heavy grief. And yet?

But there has been so much joy in the last five years. 

We still make our annual family pilgrimage to Fernandina Beach. 

There have been countless Mullis family gatherings. 

We have a massive Meadows family reunion weekend every year. 

We’ve gotten dogs (both my parents, as well as Trey and me) who would annoy Caroline to no end. 

My friends have had kids. My cousins have had kids. 

Walker and Hanna’s twins have learned how to read, and they also welcomed a third child who, if I believed in reincarnation, would be Caroline in the flesh. 

Trey and I got married, and we now live in the singlewide where Caroline first lived. 

And Zayden, the one piece of this life she’d have cared about the most? 

He’s thriving. 

Zayden began middle school: by the end of sixth grade, I think he’ll be taller than me. 

He’s running cross country this year, which is really something, considering that his whole lineage has always considered running the worst of all punishments. 

God’s still in the miracle business.

He’s smart, witty, hardheaded, and his feet smell: all traces of his mother. 

Most importantly, he loves Jesus and was baptized a couple years ago. Our unspoken communal goal was doing everything in our power to make sure that he got to spend eternity getting to know his mom. 

He got six years with her in this life, but, now, he’ll get to hear that snorting laugh for all of eternity.

All that said, I bring you back to God’s scale: 

How can there be so much sadness for our loss, but still so much joy for what we’ve gained in this life?

Five years ago, that joy seemed impossible. 

If you would have asked me five years ago, on this day, what I felt like the ‘ahead’ would look like, I would have told you that God’s got it figured out, and God is still God and still good. 

But deep down, if I’d have been honest, I probably would have said that I’m not sure how things can ever be right again. 

That wouldn’t have negated my belief that God is still God and still good, but it would have been an expression of a question mark: how do you ever go back to being right again? 

And to be honest, we haven’t: our family has changed. 

Getting back to ‘right’ and getting back to ‘the same’ isn’t possible, and it’s not the point. 

Sometimes, I swear I think it’s just the ‘surviving’ that’s the point: can you crawl out with glass shards in your hair and burn marks on your britches and still be able to say, “My God is good?”

God’s economy is an odd one. 

As we get older, we lose people, and that sorrow weighs down the scale on one side.

It would bear to human reason that this would  mean the joy would all shift to heaven, leaving us wanting. 

In our mind, when we have things taken from us- people we love- then, we have less. But God’s economy never leaves us wanting. 

How good is He?

As we have lost to eternity, so we have gained here on Earth. So has our joy multiplied, even as we’ve mourned. 

We don’t forget our sorrow because of our joy: that sorrow is proof of the love we felt. 

I have learned to appreciate mourning because that is a revelation of who I lost.

And still, my good Father has graciously has heaped blessings in our laps- blessings of overwhelming joy- of children, laughter, memories, travel, and peace. 

Isn’t that the duality for Christians?

We live with one foot in joy, and the other in sorrow. 

That’s the picture of the very Gospel which we proclaim: 

We cannot negate the price of sin, the bounty of a broken world, which is death. But death cannot negate the saving power of Jesus Christ. The Gospel in and of itself is both sorrow and joy, loss and victory. 

We serve a risen Savior, but for Him to be resurrected, the necessary first step was death. 

Joy does not negate sorrow, and sorrow cannot erase joy. 

In August 2021, my Caroline ran straight into the arms of her Father. 

What sorrow that I didn’t get to say, “I’ll see you soon.”

What joy that God said, “I’m so glad you’re home.”

For this I am grateful, and for this, I bless the name of God. He made a Way back home, and He welcomed my sister in. 

My sister is home. 

My sister is safe. 

My sister is loved beyond compare.

My sister spends her days laughing with her signature snort in the presence of the saints and at the feet of God. 

She clings to the robes of her Savior, and she’s never known so great a love, nor so great a sense of gratitude. 

How we miss her. 

But I know she wouldn’t give anything to be back here: where she is is too good. 

Plus?

Caroline got to meet Dolly Parton before me. Now, I know Dolly isn’t the star of eternity, but still? That’s pretty cool.