Grief and Flyswatters

In the midst of my vacation, I was standing in a Family Dollar trying to decide what sort of tape you needed to attach fly swatters to the back of poster board. This wasn’t the weirdest thing I’ve ever done on vacation, but it ranked right up there and to be honest, I didn’t have the best attitude about the situation.

Several months ago my little sister lost a friend quite suddenly. His death shook up his friends and family and my sister has been struggling. I’ve tried to be supportive in the ways that I feel are supportive, but let’s be honest…I’m not my sister. I don’t have the same priorities, ideals, interests or attitudes. What I think is supportive, she views as oppressive. What she thinks is supportive, I feel is enabling. I haven’t been what she’s needed over this time and lately I’ve been attempting to pray through this and act in a way that pleases God. Part of that means supporting my sister with pictures. You see, the family and friends of the young man who died have taken to holding up signs with his name on them at different locales and posting the photos on a facebook group in his memory. I understand the concept even if I don’t get the sentimentality behind it, so I was fine with helping to take pictures. I even sacrificed a page in my moleskine notebook to make a sign and then jump into a ditch to hold it up under a street sign in the town of Butman (oh yeah, high brow humor reigns in our family!). Then it was decided that my notebook sign was too small so we stopped at a store and bought posterboard, markers and something to use as holders…which is where the fly swatters enter into this tale. Turns out they are easy to tape, the plastic supports the board well and the handles are durable enough to stick in the ground. Wins all around.

From then on, everywhere we stopped, those posters came out. At the base of the bridge, when we stopped at scenic overlooks, when there was a giant moose. When the signs weren’t there, there was carving of his name onto wood or using a stick to etch it into the sand. It seemed like our vacation was shadowed by the memory of this young man and while I didn’t (and still don’t) understand emotionally the comfort that my sis was getting from the acts, I continued to take the photos.

As I took picture after picture I started to think about grief and how it looks different for everyone. My grief has always been expressed in the written word. Even from childhood I chronicled the loss of loved ones with simple poems and songs and quotes and memories written across the pages of diaries and journals. There is just something about writing that not only soothes me, but it helps me to process. After writing about my loss, I feel that not only have I bled off some of the pain but that I understand my emotions better. I feel healthier. Other people grieve in other ways, and just because they are different doesn’t mean they are wrong. It’s hard to conceptualize that when it comes to my sister, because I love her and want her to not hurt. But she needs to grieve in a way that makes sense to her, in a way that makes her healthy. And if that means I take pictures of posterboard taped to flyswatters…then so be it.