The night my sister died, I was alone.\u00a0 Sully was out having drinks with his best friend Pete.\u00a0 I called him several times, but he didn\u2019t answer, so I called Pete and soon Sully was on his way.<\/p>\n
I had seen my sister just a few days before when I flew\u00a0back for Easter.\u00a0 At that time she had asked me rather earnestly to let her join me out in Denver.\u00a0 I had said no, that this was my time to get myself together.\u00a0 I was going through my divorce, learning how to be me again, and I wasn\u2019t ready to share yet.<\/p>\n
Now I was desperately wishing I had said yes, realizing that even that probably wouldn\u2019t have stopped her from dying.\u00a0 But the guilt was overwhelming.\u00a0 So was the aloneness.\u00a0 Looking out the bedroom window between the concrete buildings, wishing Sully would get there faster, it started to snow.<\/p>\n
Normally, snow might indicate peace and calm.\u00a0 But for me, snow meant complications in flying from Denver to Boston \u2013 one more way that I wouldn\u2019t get where I needed to be.\u00a0 Then Sully finally arrived.<\/p>\n
I cried while he held me, but it wasn\u2019t enough.\u00a0 I needed to feel closer and closer, to be enveloped in something bigger than me and my pain.\u00a0 I kissed him hungrily and drew him over to my bed. He looked at me and said, \u201cAre you sure?\u201d<\/em> and I just nodded and\u00a0whispered \u201cPlease<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Tears and kisses and caresses and pain all tumbled in to one and I clung to him like a drowning man clings to a jagged rock.\u00a0 The waves of emotion that swept over me and clawed at me made me hold on tighter.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to think or feel anything but that moment and just find escape.<\/p>\n When we finished, I could breathe again.\u00a0 The pain was still there, but I could face it now.<\/p>\n Sometimes, it\u2019s not about having sex or making love.\u00a0 It\u2019s about feeling connected to the world again.\u00a0 About not feeling out on the ledge by yourself. \u00a0I\u2019ll always be grateful to Sully for giving that connection back to me.<\/p>\n The days, weeks and months after my sister\u2019s death brought me to one of the darkest times in my life.\u00a0 I lost my sister, then my job, then my home, then my boyfriend.\u00a0 I hit rock bottom and had to crawl my way back up.<\/p>\n But I survived because of the people who stood by me no matter what \u2013 that sometimes understood that words were too much, that sympathy was not enough.\u00a0 Sometimes you just have to hold on tight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The night my sister died, I was alone.\u00a0 Sully was out having drinks with his best friend Pete.\u00a0 I called him several times, but he didn\u2019t answer, so I called Pete and soon Sully was on his way. I had seen my sister just a few days before when I flew\u00a0back for Easter.\u00a0 At that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[231],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-joey-lives"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2UnPK-4F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}