Joining the wrong sisterhood

“Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality”. ~Emily Dickinson

I met the beautiful Amy at the beginning of my insane year when we pledged the same sorority. The letters of the organization doesn’t matter but Amy, she mattered. She’s a tall 5’3″ in her heels, dark Repunzel hair, eyes like the truth and a smile that could be the poster child for happiness. Looking at Amy was like looking at love because every inch of her body, from hair root to toe nail, was about fun, laughter, and warmth.

She was the friend you always wished you had, the kind you made up when you were five years old.

In the following months, I got to know Amy not only as my line sister but as my friend. I learned that she was a woman of action and a woman of incredible strength though some may have called it stubbornness.

Eventually we both left our sorority days behind, her sooner than me, and we began to live our lives. I moved to Corpus Christi to begin my career and she lived in Houston helping her family with the business. Distance didn’t change the nature of our relationship. Phone calls helped bridge that gap. When an evil boy would break my heart, she was there telling me how much of a catch I was. When I was too timid or afraid, she would let me borrow her strength. When death came knocking at my door, she was there to help put me back together when my dad died.

Men came and went, life’s events happened, and career moves added psychical distance to our friendship but Amy was still in my life.

So when she opened her own business, a coffee shop in Sugarland, I was there to be proud of her. She’s a go-getter and I knew there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do.

When she met her husband through the coffee shop, I knew this was it for her. She was happier than I’d ever seen her. Joy emanated from her pores and I was happy to just be in the same room with her again.

But she was never as joyful was she was when she was pregnant with her son Levi. A blessing, I knew the baby would be the perfect expression of Amy–gleeful and full of love. Couldn’t wait to be an auntie.

Levi was born months pre-mature and he lived at the hospital. Brain swelling. Brain bleeding. Other terms that doctors use to desensitize themselves from life. Everything was wrong with him. My dear Amy had faith, though. Faith she always had in abundance.

But today I learned that faith ended. After much deliberation, Amy and her husband decided to let Levi go this Friday. That day there will be two deaths — baby Levi and lovely Amy.

I don’t know how this will change my friend whose radiance I still remember. I know how death has changed me and I never want anyone to experience that, especially not my friend and her husband. But this death isn’t a father, it a baby, a life that at once was attached to her. How does one begin to recover from such a blow?

I’ve never met Levi but I miss him already. I miss the fact that I won’t ever get to meet him and tell him the story about how his mother and I almost blew up a car. I had these stories about how his mother loved to hang out at Denny’s at 2 in the morning. I had these pictures to show him, the presents she gave me, the wisdom she instilled.

I had so much and now its empty. I’m empty. Hallow like the first time death brushed against my life and took one of my own.

And now it’s taken Levi. And my beautiful Amy will be forever changed.

Now here’s the irony. Amy and I met joining a sisterhood, and now we’re members of another sisterhood. The broken hearts club — mended but not fixed, patched up but still lame, complete but not whole.

Welcome sister. Oh how I’d hope you’d never join.

To donation money to the Levi Aiden Bergeron memorial fund click here.