Hope and 15 years

It's been 15 years since I've talked to my brother.  15 years and one day, actually.  I'm not mad at him, and he didn't do anything wrong... Well, other than those things big brothers always do to pick on their little sisters.  But we were past that pettiness for the most part.  

We were in high school.  He came to my ball games; he drove me places; I got to tag along on some of his adventures; he could fix things and invent things.  He wasn't the most popular guy to everyone else, but that didn't matter to me.  He was my big brother.  It was a wonderful time.  

Until it wasn't.

Then 15 years ago happened.  

In the span of a split second, I grew up.  

Not really.  I was still just 13, and had so much to learn.  But I and my family learned things before we should have.  Before we were ready to.

A friend posted on her blog recently about how death teaches you things, especially tragic death, early death, death before one has lived "a full life."  I so resonated with what she described.  The casket, the vault, the physical process of preparing to lay to rest one you love.  The pain.

I wish I didn't know these things.  Wish I didn't have to know these things.  But I do.  And today I know how it feels to have not talked to one's big brother for 15 years.  

Can I tell you something?  It hurts.

It doesn't hurt in the same way it did.  It's not the searing, I-can-hardly-take-the-next-breath pain anymore.

For me it's the ache. 

I don't kid myself that Chet and I would be best friends, or even that I would think his wife (had he married, and he would have) was the best sister-in-law ever (although their kids would absolutely have been the best ever - all nieces and nephews are).  The reality of life in my family of origin is that if he lived nearby, we'd be getting together for Husker parties, family birthdays, holidays, and maybe head out to the lake together every now and then.  So I don't ache for some super-tight relationship that in reality would probably never have been.

I ache for the casual sharing of things only family members can share in that way.  Things like my babies birth and subsequent birthdays, graduations, weddings, inside jokes and frustrations and eye rolls and belly laughs that really only siblings or family members get.  Maybe I'm romanticizing what would have been, but of one thing I am certain - if Chet was still alive, I would have talked to him more recently than 15 years ago.

The intensity has waned, and the wish for the world to stop has, for the most part, passed.  Except that sometimes it rears its head, and I want to curl up under a rock (or under my pillow in bed) and pinch myself to wake up because it's all been just a horrible nightmare.  

But life continues to go on, and graduations and weddings happen without him, and babies are born, and the Huskers win and the Huskers lose.  And days and years pass.  15 years pass.

In 10 days I'll likely write about how even pain can be redeemed to be something beautiful.  In 10 days we'll celebrate what would have been Chet's 33rd birthday.  And on that same day we'll celebrate Lily's 3rd birthday.  It is a blessing to me that we celebrate that day.  It's hard to celebrate the birthday of your brother who's no longer there to celebrate it with you.  What do you do?  Get a cake?  Put candles on it for him not to blow out?  Buy balloons?  No.  You don't.  Yet, even though he's gone, I still want to and do celebrate his life.  

So God took care of that weirdness for us.  He gave us Lily.  On Chet's 30th birthday.  Miracle.  We will always celebrate that day, and now it's easier to really celebrate because we have a bright smile to carry us through it.  Someone to blow out candles and squeal with delight at balloons.  I guess I'm speaking for myself on that, because I don't really know how my parents and siblings feel, but it's how I feel.  A painful celebration redeemed by the arrival of a sweet girl.  It feels to me like a legacy is carried on.  His birthday will not be forgotten.

He will not be forgotten.

My friend wrote on her blog that if Heaven is real, it is everything to her.  With that, my friend, I can wholeheartedly relate.  Heaven is real, and it is everything to me too.  It is everything not simply because the idea of seeing my brother again is so appealing.  

It is everything to me because my God is there.  He is my hope.  If not for Him, what hope to do I have?  Why should I live this life?  Why fight the darkness that threatens to overwhelm?  Why struggle to hold it at bay?  I don't mean to be melodramatic, but seriously?  Why work so hard to live if there is nothing more than this? 

In the deepest part of my soul, eternity echos.  I was not created solely for this world.  I can feel it.  Death is so painful and difficult - even aged death - it is evident to me that it wasn't part of what we were designed to bear.  Is that not evident to you too?  And it's not just about feelings, because they can easily mislead.  Eternity and Heaven are for real.  God's Word confirms it.

I know that you may disagree with me on that - wholeheartedly disagree.  And that's ok.  It's not up to me to convince you that Heaven is for real, or any of the other things I believe.  

But because I believe those things, I have hope.  Hope to spend time in the presence of my Lord.  Hope to see my brother again.  Hope that this painful life is not all that there is.  

Today, as I and my family ache, a song echoes in my head... 

I have a hope.  I have a future.  I have a destiny that is yet awaiting me.
My life's not over.  A new beginnings just begun.
I have a hope.  I have this hope.  

I will praise Him, because He is my Hope.

(Here's a link to the song on YouTube: I Have a Hope)

The first day of school, fall of 1999.  One of the last pictures we took together.
For those who never had the privilege to meet him, let me introduce my brother, Chet Deichmann.