Day 14- Someone I cannot imagine my life without

I've thought about, and started, and erased, and restarted, and erased again, and thought some more about this post for a few days.  There are several people that fit this description to a T. I don't want to imagine my life without my babies or my husband.  I was fine before they came into my world, but I would never be the same if they weren't here now.  But there is one person who impacted my life so profoundly that I can honestly say if it weren't for him, I literally wouldn't be here today.

These are my brothers and sisters. 

The blonde headed boy in the middle is my brother Scott.

Scott and I haven't met yet.  Scott passed away almost exactly a year before I was born.

It's not something I think about or dwell on, but I know that his death is the reason I'm here.

When I was a little girl, my mom would show me pictures and tell me stories about Scott.  I think it helped her to be able to talk about him to someone who wouldn't worry about her or look at her with pity.  I enjoyed them. She just wanted me to know him, and I am so glad she did.  It was a blessing that would reveal itself later.

As I got older, bits and pieces about the week before he died would come out, and when I was in college, I wrote a story about it in a creative writing class.  It was a descriptive story, I think, so I could've written about anything, but for whatever reason, I knew I had to write about him.  It was good enough that the professor chose to read it in front of the class.  And then the professor did something he'd never done before: he told the class who wrote the story he read.  Of course, that made my day, but looking back I know it was a total God thing.  You see, when I went to my American Lit class the next hour, a woman I didn't know sat down in front of me and turned around.

"Your story was good, " she said.

"Thank you."

"Can I ask you a question?  Does your mom still keep pictures of your brother around her house?"

"Yeah.  Our hallway has family pictures in it, and he's there.  She still talks about him  a lot too."

She was quiet for a minute.

"My son died last year.  My family thinks I need to clean out his room and put away his pictures.  They want me to start moving on with my life.  But I can't. I don't think I should have to."

I didn't know what to say.  She said it made her feel better to know that my mom still talked about Scott.  She asked if she could have a copy of my story. I gave her the only one I had.  I never saw her again, and I was never able to find another copy of my story.

I think about Scott a lot.  I sometimes try to imagine both of us in the world at the same time.   I like to think we would've been buddies.  But I know that wasn't God's plan, for whatever reason. 

And I know He knows what He's doing.