You get me, I guess.

My mom has been a vegetarian for about 50 years. She doesn’t wear leather. She doesn’t kill bugs. My dad was a butcher for our family’s meat packing company. He came from blood. She avoided it. Quite the odd pairing.

My mom was eight months pregnant when they met. She had just moved from North Carolina to San Diego with my sister who was 10.

She thought she couldn’t get pregnant with me because she was breast-feeding, and using a diaphragm with spermicide.

I guess God really wanted me here.

My parents met through my two oldest sisters from their first marriages. They were coincidentally the same age. They met and became best friends.

They must’ve thought it would be a blessing that their parents fell in love and they would get to live together.

It didn’t work out that way. Chaos ensued. Let’s be real, the chaos was ever present long before my parents met.

My oldest sister from my mom went to Texas to visit her dad. She didn’t come back. She died in a car accident. Reportedly she was hanging out the sunroof when they hit a curb. The car rolled. The other four people in the car survived.

That must’ve been hard for them. I know it was hard for us.

I was five. My mom said when they told us, I started jumping on the bed, yelling “She’s an angel now! She’s an angel now!” My mom says my dad yanked me down on the bed and told me to be quiet.

Even then I was an optimist. Apparently. I don’t remember. I can’t remember a single thing about her. That bothers me. It makes my brain itch.

However, I’m glad that part of my spirit, the part that sees the good through the bad, hasn’t been beaten out of me. I am thankful for that.

I could put more time in the making this story read better… but I just wanted to get it out. I doubt anyone will read this anyway.

I’ll see you again someday, sis. I’m sorry I’m not in more of a rush, but we have all of eternity to make up for lost time… and I have stuff I have to do here first. Just waiting on the Good Lord to make it clear what exactly that stuff is.