God Bless the Moon

We lost a family member last night and I'm still sort of in shock. Like, I know it happened and she's gone but I keep thinking that this can't be right. When she became part of my family I was a brat. I was mad because she was selling the house I'd grown up in and I had loved that house. Then she stole my brother away who I adored. He was the last one at home with me and she took him and I didn't like that one little bit.

When they first got together, she went out of her way to be kind to me, to get to know me. She didn't chide me for being rude, she just went about her way of trying to get us to be friends. Although she won me over pretty soon after they got together, it wasn't until later in life I realized how she had helped my brother. He had some loud and nasty demons that he managed to conquer and she helped him keep them at bay. I didn't always understand what they had together but I think that's the way relationships are; you can't ever really understand one when you're looking from the outside. I always knew that they loved each other and loved all of us.

The thing is, I think she was like me in that she was afraid of a lot of things. She worried so much about things within her control and beyond. Unfortunately, her fears and worries overwhelmed her to where she started to withdraw a bit. She didn't do enough for herself to deal with those worries, put them into perspective, and take care of her health. You wouldn't see her much outside the house and she was always ill. Although we didn't know it, I think that was when her heart troubles started.

I'm sure that there are all sorts of scientific reasons why she became so ill and passed away but I keep coming back to this idea that her worries gnawed at her and her poor heart couldn't deal with all of the fears that consumed her. So now she is in a better place, a place where she'll know no fear; a place where she'll be at peace. I picture her reunited with her parents and the dogs she loved and lost. Although I miss her and wish she hadn't left us so soon, I like to think that my family up in heaven has made room for in that Great Bingo Hall in the sky and now she will look out for us and try to keep us safe. That may be a childish sort of thing to believe but I don't care; that's just how I see it.