Our extended family has recently experienced the unexpected death of one of our own, resulting in emotional reactions that span the whole sweep of feelings that anyone with such a loss would know.
Among the choices that arise is the question of whether to keep grief at bay by maintaining those sentiments as personal and private or to share them with others.
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My own tendency is to hold them just among ourselves.
My wife, however, has found comfort in the very caring and loving reactions from friends, including some with whom we’ve had little recent contact.
She’s done that through today’s expanse of social media, resulting in a couple hundred responses from those who read the story of her life-long bond with her younger sister.
Penny died last month, just short of a month after discovering she had developed a fast-acting form of liver cancer. She would have celebrated her 75th birthday had she lived only a few days longer.
Here are some excerpts Sylvia posted on the day of her sister’s passing:
“For the last 75 years, I’ve had an amazingly close relationship with my little sister, who was eight years younger than me. This afternoon, my precious Penny Pritcher Joiner was embraced by Jesus and joined her beloved parents in heaven.
“It has been heartbreaking to realize she would be leaving me behind, for we’ve been together for very important occasions or crises in my life or hers.
“After an overnight in the hospital, she asked that we come for a visit before she might have to have chemotherapy and be sicker. We were there for four days as she declined rapidly until we took her back to the hospital to ease her pain and make her more comfortable, knowing then that her disease was terminal.
“She returned to her daughter’s home with hospice care and lasted just one week. I’m so very thankful she is no longer suffering, and the immediate and extended family were able to tell her how much we loved her and to say goodbye while she peacefully accepted that she would soon see Jesus and Dad.”
Since that posting, she offered another description of their almost 75 years of sharing life closely with each other and our families, and another story of even more details in the funeral home’s book of comments offered for others to join with their own memories.
So far, hers is the only one spanning multiple pages. She explained why – “It’s to honor Penny.
“Five years ago, Richard and I invested in a second home in North Carolina, where our whole extended family could enjoy a mountain cabin with an incredible view of God’s magnificent creations in the Smoky Mountains.
“We siblings have been blessed with so many terrifically happy times there with all our children and grandchildren. Penny, our brother, Jay, and I were there with our spouses for sibling time in October this past year, and we are so very thankful for that precious time with our Penny.”
She is the only member of our family who had not seen a black bear since childhood, one of the area’s most famous of its amazing wildlife. It was something she earnestly wanted to do. So, a Christmas present this year was a promise to spend two days together in the part of the national park where bears are commonly seen.
To mark the occasion, she kept a blanket emboldened with images of those bears we had given her previously, for her to anticipate the opportunity to fulfill her desire. In her last days, she lay under that cover, providing a poignant reminder of a promise we could not fulfill.
One thoughtful response as the days unfolded came in person from our friend, retired US Navy Chaplain Rich Stoglin, who came to our home with gifts, scripture, and prayer for Penny, us, and our entire family.
As a result of these kinds of outreach to her, I’ve witnessed her transition from grief to a quiet acceptance. During our six-hour drive from Penny’s home to ours, the day we left her, my wife intermittently wept for four of those hours.
Tears still come, but far less frequently, and that is because people cared enough to uplift us with their sincere words of shared sorrow for our loss and the promise of reunion on the other side of this earthly life.
So, my tendency to keep this personal and private, as I described at the beginning, is transformed knowing so many are out there to lift us up.
May God bless them all. They not only provide hope on this occasion but also a reminder of how our collective strength as a nation, aligned with the best instincts of our human nature, could restore us at a time when our divisions are so deep.
