Memories Remain In Your Heart

When my sister & brother-in-law were killed tragically last August, my nephews let my sisters, mom, dad & I go to their house so that we could each get some things to remember them by. I wanted to grab everything! I wanted to take every single piece of my sister with me & cherish it forever! But I knew in my heart that the memory of my sister is inside of me. The rest would be just momentos. While we were there, we each got some of her jewelry (I got a sapphire ring that I wear on my pinky finger & will NEVER take off, along with a few other sapphire pieces since we share the same birthstone) plus I got a Coca-Cola clock & a stained glass owl lamp along with some smaller owls from her collection, a few necklaces, her Tupperware name badge & a t-shirt.....a very special t-shirt to me. It was the t-shirt she wore the last time I saw her in July of 2003 when I went to Pennsylvania. I actually found the t-shirt in the hamper & it was dirty, but there is no way I'm washing it!

I asked Mikey, my nephew, to please let me know when they were going to have the auction for the rest of their things because I would much rather buy them than have a stranger own pieces of my sister. I don't expect them to give the stuff away to us & I know I couldn't buy it all, but I would like to get some more of her things. I already purchased her jewelry armoire because I know that they need money to go towards the estate & all the bills that were left behind.

Over the past several months, I've asked him a couple of times when they were going to have the auction & it kept getting delayed for one reason or another. So I told him to just make sure that he gave me enough of an advance notice so that I could make plans to get there for it since I live over 500 miles away. Well, I get an email from him just now telling me that the auction (which is now just a yard sale) is this weekend!!! And I can't go since I have to drive 4 hours away to pick up my daughter's friend from Traverse City as she's coming down to spend some time with us! I am so disappointed right now :( I just wanna cry! No, I am crying :*(

So now I just keep trying to tell myself that my memories of my sister remain in my heart. While the things I have of her remind me of her, it's what's inside my heart that counts. I made this curio cabinet (in above picture) into a memorial cabinet for Karen & Jimmy. It has all of the things in it that I did get that day along with some pictures of them & a baggie of dirt that I got from their gravesite, which I will be taking back to the gravesite with me on August 29th (one year date of the accident). It's some sort of Indian tradition that one of Jimmy's friends told me about. He said that you're supposed to mourn their deaths for one year & then on the 1 year date of their deaths, you take the dirt & sprinkle it back onto their graves & the mourning is supposed to stop. I doubt that I will ever stop mourning because not a single day goes by that I don't think about them & shed a tear :*(

Off to cry myself to sleep now,
B
P.S. If anyone's even reading my blog, I apologize for the downer post today. Hopefully next time I blog, I'll have something happier to write about.