I'm glad it's your birthday

When we lose someone, when someone we love dies, it's as if we lose our voice. We can scream and cry, yet no one outside can hear, and life goes on. The earth still turns, people go to work, school, to play, yet our lives are suddenly on hold, and we can't get anyone else to really notice.

I was emotionally absent a great deal of the time when my younger siblings were growing up. Part of it was the age difference (8, 10, 12 years younger than me), but part of it was that I was a weird kid, stuck in my own neurosis world.

I remember each birth, and many wonderful flashes of their childhoods, yet not as many as I would like to remember now. My loss, to be sure.

All of us had various nicknames, from each other, from other relatives. But I remember giving Kristin the one that seemed to stick. Her name was Kristin Carol, after our dad's sister, and from somewhere I started calling her Kristin Carrot. She seemed to like that, she had carrot decorative stuff all around her 'little house'.

We were going through some of Mom's & Kristin's stuff recently, and some of her carrot belongings were found. How awful to lose people we love, how sweet to remember the good stuff.

Kristin Carol Anderson would have been 50 today. The world is a lesser place without her.

Sailor added this