A Trip to Remember?

Have you missed me? I have been off....Somewhere. Everywhere. Nowhere. All at once. To be more specific, we just returned from the Texas Gulf Coast. It was as relaxing as any trip with five children and one grandpa in a travel trailer can be. It was a trip that needed taking, a trip through time, a trip to be remembered and then forgotten and then remembered again in such a way that will leave us wondering if it was the trip where the mosquitoes attacked or the one where the wind blew down our shelter....the one with the sunburn, perhaps?


But it will always be remembered by me as the trip that was taken after Stevie died. The one where I tried to act normal, and in fact, often felt normal....except for the moments I didn't.

My brother has died. And at first I wasn't going to blog about it because it is too personal. And I know what you're thinking....that surely someone who has just recently blogged about breasts cannot have anything be too personal to blog about. But you're wrong. A lot of my life is too personal to blog about. And Stevie has always been a part of that personal life. But since this blog is meant to be somewhat of a journal for me, how strange would it be not to mark the time that Stevie died? How strange, indeed?

There is too much to write here about Stevie. There is too much to share. There is too much to hold in. There is too much to regret and too little to remember about my autistic brother with Down Syndrome.

So I'll close with this image of Camille, instead.....she is looking out at the Gulf, which was brown and choppy on this particular afternoon....watching it churn and jump and swirl....not thinking about how if we had come on another day it might have been lovely and smooth and clear as glass...beautiful and green and peaceful. Not thinking at all about what might have been....

Signing Off as Stevie's Little Sister