The Optimistic Pessimist

Getting ready for the holidays this year meant putting together a photo arrangement of this beautiful man.

It was considerably more difficult than I had expected; I hadn't planned on tears as I sifted through the library of photos of my brother.

I always think of family during the holidays, but this year, naturally, I am feeling a heightened sense of gratitude for all the people in my life.

Three years ago, just before Thanksgiving, I nearly lost my sister to a stroke. Benjy and I hurried to the hospital to meet the helicopter that had transported our sister from Logan to Salt Lake. Her husband would have to make the long drive from their home, so it was my brother and I who met with the doctors and social worker. 

It was a scary time as we waited to hear our sister's prognosis. And even after we learned her life had been spared, it was an even longer wait to find out how much of our sister we would have left. Benjy and I spent a lot of time together talking, hoping, thinking, praying, and of course laughing, at Mindy's bedside.  We didn't know if she would ever walk, let alone speak again. She got pneumonia; her lung collapsed; she had to relearn how to swallow, walk, write, and talk again. And we waited for any sign that Mindy would still be Mindy after she recovered.

Today, Mindy is doing fine--almost better than ever! She runs races, teaches reading, and is enrolled at Utah State University. And I am grateful for that trial for a number of reasons. This year, as we celebrated what Mindy calls her "strokiversary," I took a moment to celebrate the time that tragedy, as difficult as it was, allowed me to spend with my brother. Who would have known that not three years later I would be planning my brother's funeral, picking out his casket, and arranging his burial plot? I don't think anyone is prepared for that task in their thirties--or maybe at any age, for that matter. There was a moment during the funeral planning when I literally cried out asking my Heavenly Father for a tender mercy.  Now I know I got one. Today I think of that time in the hospital with my brother and sister as Heaven sent.

And as I think back on his life, I find this post by my dear friend Susan Anderson so fitting and so appropriate.

Benjy, I miss you. Nothing is the same this year without you.