Late at night on October 22, 2019 we learned Cyndie had died. For some reason all this week I had been thinking it was the 19th. I have no clue why. I was just uploading pictures for this post and it was on the 22nd!! I’m losing my mind. I blame nursing school.
Anyway, I remember it was a school night for the kids. I was packaging up Roman shades to ship the next day. I was planning to finish up my work day and go to bed. I usually tried to finish working around 10-10:30. I was taping a label to a boca when I saw a call from my sister, Ashley, coming in on my phone. I remember having a sinking feeling because Ashley never calls me. We always text. Literally, like everyday we talked to each other at that time. Several times a day. . . . So I answered and she asked if I was sitting down. I said yes. And she told me they had just learned that Cyndie died. She was living with mom and dad at the time. Mom was sick and needed lots of care. She was in and out of the hospital. So it turns out the cops that found her came over to talk to mom and dad, but there was no answer. Ashley and Dad figured it was probably when they were both changing mom’s packing on her chest tube wound and they just didn’t hear the door. So later that night another cop that wasn’t the one that found her came and told Dad and Ashley. But he wasn’t allowed to share any details because he wasn’t the cop that found her.
Neal and I came over to mom and dad’s. It was absolutely heartbreaking. I felt that I had already mourned Cyndie because the sister I knew died long before then. My grief was in seeing my parents so sad. They looked like little children, sitting tone hair bed sobbing into their pillows. There have been several times in my life where I’ve realized my parents are “just people too.” After I had my own children and felt very inadequate I remember thinking, “Wait, my parents felt like this too! They’re just human!” This was another time. The people I always thought were super human were now reduced to tears. It was so sad.
My siblings and I tried to go to the police station to see what we could find out, but they wouldn’t tell us anything. They said it had to be the cop that found her to talk to us. So then we went to her house to see if we could figure anything out. We went around the backyard and tried to break into the house. Well, what we discovered next, I won’t talk about in case my parents ever read this. But we new she had probably been deceased for some time. It was heartbreaking.
I stopped by wal mart on the way home to get snacks. it was about 3am at this time. I remember going through self checkout and something wasn’t working and I started crying. Someone came up to me to try to help and I just unloaded. I said, “I’m sorry! My sister just died and it felt productive to come here and buy snacks for everyone while we sit around and plan a funeral and all that.” I don’t remember exactly what the person said, but I remember that she said something along the lines of “whatever you do in the next few days is exactly right and exactly what you’re supposed to do. There’s no rule for how to handle this so if you need to buy cupcakes at 3am, that’s what you need to do right now.” It was one of things right time right place situations and I was really glad I crossed paths with that person.
In the following days we planned the funeral. I can’t remember if it was me or dad that came up with it, but we decided to have bagpipes play at her funeral. I can’t remember exactly what he played now because I wasn’t there. I watched the funeral on my mom’s ipad with her in the hospital. I think they played Danny Boy and Amazing Grace or something along those lines.
Well, I’m actually not sure I can talk about this anymore. There’s so much more to record about this time, but I think this will have to be enough for today.
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