Something made me start thinking about how when someone dies, you don’t want to dwell on the “bad” stuff. It seems wrong, in a sense, to think ill of someone who’s gone. But what made Emily, Emily… was just as much the “bad” stuff, as the good, if that makes sense. (I hope I don’t upset people with this post, but then again, it’s my blog I can write what I want. :). She had a heart of gold, but she also had a temper. She wrote the sweetest cards, but she didn’t always think before she spoke. She was at times selfless, but at other times, the most self-centered person I have ever met. And you know what? The same things could be said about all of us, we all have our faults. A lot of our lives were filled with ups and downs, horrible fights, and a lot of hurt words.
But that’s family. You love. You dislike. You fight. You make up.
And to pretend that Emily was always an angel is a lie. Yes, we may have put her down at times--- but she had no trouble putting us down too. But she didn’t discriminate- from what I’ve been hearing, there were a lot of people that were on the receiving end of her sharp retorts. That girl could sure put you in your place. As far as temperaments go- my mother and I are similar in the fact that we are slow to get angry, but slow to forgive. Emily and Dad were the same in that they were quick to lose their tempers, but neither of them can stand to have anyone mad at them. They both will bug you endlessly until you end up saying it’s okay just to make them go away. So when you have those different tempers clashing, it could sometimes get heated in our house. But the bottom line is that at the end of the day, things were usually okay. We made it work. And it was a struggle. But I think that’s a testament to all of us- because no matter how bad things got, we never gave up on each other.
I’ve been kicking myself remembering all the times I went to bed angry. All the times I got snippy with her on the phone. The times when I kept her at a distance because I was too afraid to let her get close and hurt me again. I think we all are dealing with those similar emotions. But as wonderful, and yes, as special, as Emily was and still is- she was difficult. And to say anything otherwise is ignoring a huge part of who and what she was. People saw a lot of the “heated” moments that we had, but they didn’t always see how we made up. They didn’t see that as much as Emily and I fought, she always called back. They didn’t see that when she got into that car accident, her Daddy was the first person that she called. And they didn’t see the look on his face when he went tearing out the door to get to his little girl. They don’t know that when Emily and I weren’t home, and Dad heard an ambulance go by, he would call us to make sure it wasn’t us the ambulance was heading for. Emily and I would laugh, but I remember her telling me once that it was one of the things that she loved about Dad. They didn’t hear all the times Mom stopped what she was doing at work to talk to Emily about absolutely nothing when she called her. Or the times Mom would take her to lunch because Emily had a bad day, even though Mom really didn’t have the time. They didn’t see the times at the dinner table when we would reminisce about silly moments from when Em and I were little. We teased each other. Some people may have thought it was picking, or mean, but that’s how we were.
Not a day goes by that we don’t remember how special she is. Or that we wish we could take back some of the angry words. You can waste away your life torturing yourself with the “what ifs”, and the “if onlys”. But the bottom line is that we never gave up on Emily. And she never gave up on us. Why? Because we are a family. And families make allowances for each other’s faults. And what I want people to know is that yes, we may have put her down at times- but we were always there to help her back up when she needed it.
"Love...binds everything together in perfect harmony."
~Colossians 3:14 NRSV
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