Betsy

There are many stories I have not told, naturally, but there is one that keeps coming up. I keep debating about telling it . . . today I will, at least part of it.

I truly believe grief has to be one of the strangest of human emotions. It seems to me, that about the time one believes the “grief” and the loss are dealt with, the emotions come up and bite you in the back side. So far 2009 seems to be doing that a little more in our family. I don’t know why, it will be soon 3 years since the loss . . .

Remember a couple weeks ago when Ocho moved back in and I had a room to take apart? Well in re-organizing the contents of the room, I came across a folder. I did not recognize it – but as I started going through it a rush of emotions and tears took over. No one was home, so I could cry without making a scene or stirring things up for others.

A week before that, I received a call from my Kat, our niece, seeing if I was close by. My mother in law was having a very hard day. The sight of an old acquaintance brought the emotions to the surface.

My husband is the youngest of four children -and the only boy. There is Ann, the oldest, Betsy, 2nd; Cindy 3rd and then Will. Memorial Day weekend 2006, our family received news that seems still all too surreal. We were in town as well as our niece and Betsy and her husband. Everyone else had gone away for the weekend. At 5:30 a.m. on that Saturday, we received a call from Ann, who was at the beach. Em (her daughter and house sitter) had called when a detective had arrived at my MIL’s house during the night. Betsy had died, overnight. Actually she had been shot and killed. (Emotions are buggers, this is harder to write/type than to say). It was devastating and just did not fit into our world. No one’s world, no real people that is. In one evening the family lost a daughter, sister, friend, aunt. And they lost a son-in-law, brother-in-law, uncle, friend. What happened? Emotions, loss of control, bad decision? All of them combined. Life was crumbling around my brother in law, and in the heat of things, an action was taken and with that a life and his freedom.

What was in that folder? It was a folder of sentimental items from Betsy’s house. Probably a drawer with miscellaneous cards and photos and

School record book and what was once white gloves

Lovely notes of affection from her husband. It is rather difficult to read cards that shared such love and to know how the story ended.

I had wondered, and still do, what to do with the items. A shadowbox for my MIL? Or would that be too, oh I don’t know . . .

So here we are today. I forgot what today was. It would have been Betsy’s 51st birthday. My MIL has asked everyone to go out to eat tonight because it would have been Betsy’s birthday. This is new. I asked hubby about it and he said he believes she is afraid of the forgetting. Even though so many memories are re-told and enjoyed at the various get togethers, time is still marching on. More time away from Betsy.

There is always a laugh at how Betsy never peeled a shrimp for herself or cut her steak, and now she is in Heaven with her dad, probably back to his cutting her steak and shelling her shrimp . . .

I think I will have shrimp tonight . . .

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