Lunch with a 50 Caliber View

The Vision

It’s been over twenty-two years since my sister died. I can’t explain why it’s taken me this long to write down the happenings that followed for almost six months after her death. The visions, conversations, and directives are as vivid now as they were all those years ago.

Mid-day, I received a call from my eldest sister, Arlene, informing me of our sister Diane’s death. It was a car accident, five days prior. She didn’t know any details. It happened in Leesburg, a small town in central Florida, and had taken most of the week for the authorities to locate and notify Diane’s husband Bill in Miami. Diane had been visiting mom and dad and the accident happened on her return trip.

The Drive

After regaining my composure from seeing the vision of my sister's fatal accident, I needed to call her husband Bill. It was important for me to find out how he was holding up and how the kids were doing.

I was never particularly fond of Bill. He was a workaholic, aloof, and a bit pompous … a brilliant man with, in my opinion, absolutely no common sense. I didn’t care for the indifferent way he treated Diane and had never heard him have a compassionate discussion on any subject. My mother, however, had assured me on several occasions that he could be quite human. She was actually very fond of him.

Making Choices

When we finally arrived at Mom and Dad’s house in Old Town, Bill and I were emotionally exhausted from the long drive and the visit to the police station. Fortunately Bill had been spared the emotional trauma of having to identify Diane’s body. After all, how many out-of-town accident victims with full identification could have died in a small Florida town?

My parents were in a worse emotional state than either Bill or I. Certainly losing a wife or sister as a terrible tragedy, but nothing could be worse than losing a child. As much as my heart ached for my loss, it ached a thousand times more for my parents. We spent the next few hours comforting each other and reminiscing about Diane.

Making Choices (continued)

Back at the office, Bill and I sat on a comfortably padded bench in front of her desk while our saleslady prepared the purchase papers. I felt quite content about the entire situation…almost smug. I knew that Diane really liked this gravesite. I had felt her contentment and approval so vividly.

Finalizing the sale took longer than we had expected. The saleslady had to call her boss a couple of times to question him on details. It wasn’t long before I became fidgety and restless. An impatient, gnawing frustration began to build inside me.

How Diane Communicated

At first, in the weeks after my sister's death, I never really knew when she was with me or what she wanted. I would only know when I felt her emotions; those intense feelings that I knew were not mine. It took me awhile to understand and to put them into perspective with the decisions that Bill and I were making about her funeral arrangements.

Diane didn't verbalize what she wanted in the beginning; she used her dramatic emotions. Sometimes there was an outburst of emotions that pointedly made her wishes known to me. Perhaps in the beginning she hadn't learned to concentrate her thoughts well enough to verbalize her wants, or maybe I wasn't experienced enough to interpret them precisely. But she made her wants known, from selecting the cemetary plat that she wanted, to choosing the flowers that would adorn the chapel and her coffin.

Knowing Diane

Diane was only 42 when she died, less than two years older than I was. Of my three sisters, she was the closest to me in age, but not necessarily the closest. This sister was always a very strong-willed individual. Intense would be a kind word to describe her personality. Overbearing and manipulative would be not-so-kind terms, but accurate. She knew the things that she wanted in life, and worked every angle in her power to get them.

My older sisters, Arlene and Patty, were nine and six years older than I. Diane and I were close in age, but I was the baby of the family.