What the People Don't Tell You

So, it's here, the much waited for and anticipated day.
The school year is over. I'm no longer a Junior. 11th grade is done with...FOREVER!!!
I'm hoping that 12th grade will be easier, 11th grade nearly killed me, but my older sister says that 12th grade sucked for her, so now I'm slightly worried, but you know, there's a whole summer between then and now.
Anyway, I have a pleasant story to tell (yes, another one) I put it off for almost the whole week to publish my post about Steve, (oddly enough I keep dreaming about him, like I was the Little Mermaid and he was my prince and then he drowned...yeah, I agree, odd!) but now here it is.
My story about stupid people, we all have one. And just to warn you, I'm going to talk about death, so if that's too heavy or tender for you, you don't have to keep reading, nobody's blaming you, it's a tough subject. =D
So on Tuesday I went with my young women's group (kind of like a girl's scout troop, just less fun) I hardly ever go because I have the same problem here that I do in school, I get ignored no matter how loud I am. But there I was on Tuesday with my mom and younger sister.
We came to this bread factory thinking it was a tour but ended up sitting in this conference like room with a table up front and a large mirror glaring down at it. The table had some cute little bread animals on it and we realized it was a demonstration on how to make those adorable little animals and other things out of bread.
How fun.
Just to clear up, I'm not a cook. I like it enough, but after a while, I get bored and I don't really like touching raw meat, I'm not a total cheerleader when it comes to being grossed out, I mean I just spent three hours yesterday getting dirty with horses, but raw meat takes the cake. Gross.
And just as a personal preference, I like making sweets, even though the dough always tastes better than the end result. I made cookies once that looked like cookies but tasted like French-fries, my siblings joked about needing fry sauce (Utah weirdness, for those who don't know (and I can't say that I blame you) fry sauce is an odd mix of ketchup and mayonnaise with an added bonus of pickle juice in between. I'm not that fond of it, especially not when I have to wash it out of the bowl!)
Sorry, rambling there =)
So we waited for this preppy cheerleader lady in her fifties to come talk to us about bread. At first I liked her, she was funny and I expected it to be boring.
Then she got too funny.
She started asking questions to hand out adorable (and by italics I mean sarcasm) little bags of bread.
"Who's the Laurel president?" she asked, then, "Who's the Beehive president." (Two ranks I guess in young women's? It's a church thing I'm not really fond of, don't judge us by our young women groups! It's like high school with all the drama, girl's camp is that hyped up to about a MILLION!)
Those questions weren't really fair, I mean, who could win unless you were the lucky one to be called as el president. I was okay at this point, but I could see my mom shrinking in her seat with every word the preppy cheerleader lady said.
Then things got REALLY ugly.
The lady asked who had been married the longest. No big deal, until you know the rest of the story. Mom has a friend who lost her husband in a car crash four years ago, THIS WEEK! That poor lady was there and EVERYONE turned to look at HER.
Pressure much? Completely especially when Little Mrs. Cheerleader marched over there and said, "How long have you been married?"
Mom's friend was totally cool about this, "Only a year."
"What?" Cheerleader said. "How could it only be a year? Now I'm confused! Are you married or not?"
Mom's friend's daughter piped up, "I'm her daughter, I can testify that she's married!"
"Then how could it only be a year?" the cheerleader demanded.
"She remarried," the daughter said.
"Oh," the cheerleader said.
And to make matters worse, she kept pouring salt into the wound by making jokes like, "I'm still married to the same husband, yadda yadda, wonder why sometimes."
Mom was getting more than a little irritated with this lady, especially when she wouldn't stop! She even jokingly told Mom's friend that she "couldn't participate" because she already had a stupid little prize.
I was getting a little annoyed now. I know what that kind of pressure feels like, I've lost two sisters, both babies. It really hurts when someone starts digging around in your heart in places where those loved ones should've been. I don't like looking at other babies, jealous for the life my sister's didn't get, but it has to hurt like a spear in the heart to have someone joke about your beloved husband as if he split not died.
We got our free samples of food (after all that suffering we weren't going to leave without it!) and then with Mom's friend racing out behind us, we ran for the parking lot, desperate not to have preppy cheerleader lady follow us.
Mom was angry, compassion, understanding, she said that no one has it anymore. Sometimes I have to agree, I've been in that same situation, in that class (for 10th grade) we had a sub that started talking about how wonderful it is to be a mother, holding that precious child in your arms...blah, blah, blah, it was the day before two years after my sister died as an infant. I ran for it, my older sister was close behind me.
In this day and age it seems like people want us to erase the pain, pretend it never happened. I can't pretend that I don't have a little sister as much as Mom's friend can't pretend that she wasn't married. People don't tell you how much it hurts to see life and then watch it fade. It does hurt! I never got to know my sister, and at first I never wanted her, and then she died and all I want now is to hold her little body and feel warmth, see her eyes and have her look back at me.
How can I pretend that she never existed?
This ends up in my books, naturally. I started writing Twisted on March eighth 2011, on March 9th 2010, we learned that my sister had died. The pain is there with my heroine's, Allie Taylor's grandma, Laura Sylvia Hawkins Taylor. Long name, but there's a reason she keeps it like that.
Laura's twin brother died at 22 years old and everyone around her told her to just get over it, that Payton was in a better place. Basically what everyone told my family about my sisters. Just get over it is NOT something we want to hear. Just getting over it is like not acknowledging my sister's life, like we don't care.
I know this post really has nothing to do with my books, or my violin, it's just something that I saw that shocked me.
I'm calling for compassion. If you know someone who has lost a loved one, why do you ignore them? Pretend their loss isn't real? That hurts when people ignore you, especially for WHY they ignore you. Most of you don't know what to say, but I do, I know what I wish people would say, just talk about the loved one. You think it might make us cry and how could it not? But we want other people to acknowledge that someone we love is in heaven and part of our hearts have died with them. Ask questions, listen, ignoring is the worst thing you can do.
And sometimes you don't even have to say anything at all. Just let us know that we are loved, that you're worried for us, that you care.
That you're there.
Actions speak louder than words.
Ignoring speaks nothing but knives.
And I know there's compassion out there, Rachel K Johnson's comment on my other blog post about her concern for me nearly makes me cry, for a good reason (don't worry Rachel! =D) and there have been people who have made an effort to reach out. Compassion exists, it's just getting squished.
And for the record, I don't hate cheerleaders, seriously, I just hate the movie stereotype of cheerleaders. Sheesh. I know you have brains! Just because you cheer doesn't make you a bubblehead! And I'm kind of jealous of how flexible you guys are, if I did the splits, I'd know about it for weeks as I tried to walk.
So anyway, be compassionate. People tell you not to be, to ignore blaring grief, but they only say that because they don't know and they don't know because they don't ask.
What people don't tell you is the difference between the brightness of day and the darkness and unknowns of night.