In my dream she looked different than in life. Her dark gold hair flowed easily around her narrow, relaxed shoulders. She wore a simple garment and a rope bracelet she had gotten years ago from a close family friend. Her hands held mine, lifting them up close to our chins. She looked at me. Her sage-green eyes were backlit with joy.
This was the first time I saw my twin after her death. After the litany of tests which allowed the neurologist to declare her dead. After my parents arrived in her ICU room and my uncle said a last prayer for us as a family of four. After watching her body decline and ultimately succumb to the infection. After the knowing look she gave me in her last conscious moment on earth. After the thirty-hour night that changed the way I experience love, life, and God forever.
Twenty-six was too young. For both of us.
As I sat in the vinyl chair on the right side of her bed, my skin covered up with a yellow apron and non-latex gloves, I looked down at the prayer shawl I brought from St. Luke’s all the way to a small room at a hospital in Austin where my sister lay fighting for her life. I remembered how many people whom I love had prayed for her and even sent her notes, cards, and books. I remembered how I had cried on the shoulder of some of these same people and how many of them cried, too. I thought of the canopy of love from her family and friends that hung in the room. When I looked up from the shawl in my lap, I saw Jesus next to my sister, holding her puffy and speckled hand.
I knew when she was gone. And I knew where she was going.
In the weeks that came after that night, I was busy. Preoccupied with arrangements for her cremation, polite calls from the hospital Chaplain, and putting together a funeral service, I didn’t leave room to grieve the end my twin’s difficult journey on Earth. As I was going through a box of her things, I found several notebooks, many of which had a hodgepodge of musings and sketches, but in one she wrote her life story as she remembered it. It stopped me in my tracks. It was a gift. A gift I believe God gave me that brought her back to me for a moment, much like my dream, and reminded me of where she is now.
Lent is a much more powerful season for me now. I have a new understanding of the cross, a new appreciation of Jesus’ sacrifice, and His victory over death. Because of His grace, I will see my sister again, and because of His love, I know peace until that day comes.
Beth Armstrong, Director of Adult Ministries
