obituary, take 2

Well, we can’t rewrite the past and it’s hard to know if it would make any difference most of the time anyway. We can hope that as time passes, stigmas decrease and humans become more capable of extending grace and love in lieu of judgment and assumptions…that the weariness of living up to unrealistic expectations and wearing ourselves thin trying to be something other than ourselves will eventually soften our edges and bring gentleness to our ways of being in the world.

Yesterday marked the 22nd anniversary of losing my sister to suicide, a grief that ebbs and flows in intensity with the passing time. It’s no longer the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning but it’s always there in the recesses of my heart and mind. This year the anniversary wasn’t as hard to stomach as some other years, and I was grateful to have time out in the woods on a hike with my sister Katelyn. We hiked to Mary’s Rock, a lovely and sentimental spot for me and decided to part ways for our return hike in favor of different distances and a bit of solitude. At my last session with my counselor, I was talking about how I was disappointed that the obituary we shared when Sara died wasn’t more transparent and honoring of who she was, her struggles, while shining light on mental health issues and decreasing stigma. So, on my solo hike back down the trail, I dictated a new version and I’ll share it here, very much written from my own perspective, so a Rhoda-skewed obituary, if you will.