Let it burn.

It's all right to cry

Crying gets the sad out of you

It's all right to cry

It might make you feel better

Raindrops from your eyes

Washing all the mad out of you

Raindrops from your eyes

It's gonna make you feel better

It's all right to feel things

Though the feelings may be strange

Feelings are such real things

And they change and change and change

Sad 'n' grumpy, down in the dumpy

Snuggly, hugly, mean 'n' ugly

Sloppy, slappy, hoppy, happy

Change and change and change

It's all right to know

Feelings come and feelings go

It's all right to cry

It might make you feel better

~ Rosey Grier, Free to Be You and Me

My outlook on life is almost always sunny. I prefer smiling to frowning and laughing to crying. Which is generally where I'm at.

But.

I don't like numbness. I mean, unless it's helping me while pushing out a 9 pound baby or something. Otherwise I like to feel things. It makes me feel alive and connected to what's happening around me.

Yeah.

Today is August 11. My sister, Deanna, would have turned 47 today. And just typing that makes me smile because she loved her birthday. She never let it just slide on by without any sort of pomp or circumstance--which to her was simply defined as being surrounded by friends and love. Deanna was all about acknowledging people and lives and milestones. Herself included.

That woman knew how to live.

So that--thoughts of how she lived her life so big and full--always make me laugh. But conversely, it stirs inside of me these complicated emotions. Like, anything that I live through or witness that is impossibly beautiful or wonderful, I imagine her enjoying it. And again, the smile comes followed by that wave of emotion pushing against my eyeballs for a fleeting second. Then, almost always, it quickly washes over.

But today is kind of different. Her birthday makes me ache to speak to her. So, so badly.

Yeah.

Another thing: I wasn't on Facebook when my sister was alive. And, as silly as it sounds, I came unglued today when trying to tag her in my post today. I simply wanted to say that I loved her and when I typed her name and it didn't pop up on a pull down page, I was reminded that there wasn't really a way to reconcile that. Because that would require her to be here to click that lonely little "accept request" button. But she never will.

And that? That did it. So instead of countering it with a phone call to a friend or some warm and fuzzy thoughts, I decided to just let it burn. To let myself cry the ugliest of cries and miss her in the rawest, most primal way. To speak out loud that I'm super sad that she's not here and how every single perfect moment or funny event is bittersweet without her. And I told her all of that. I did.

I am okay. I am. But that doesn't mean that I don't deeply miss my sister every single day. But especially today. Because this was her day.

Today, I decided to just let it burn. Let the hurt remind me of how fortunate I am to have known her. Isaiah cried a few times today, too. And I just held him tight and told him the same thing: "Let it burn, son. It's okay." Because it was.

And it is.

I'm rambling, I know. But really, I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on my sister's life. Because her life was awesome. And so was she.

Yeah.

That's all I've got. Thank you for listening, okay?

***

Now playing on my mental iPod. . . . .