Part One

Holidays aren’t the same when there is a big part of your family missing. What happens when your heart JUST isn’t whole? Broken heart, broken family, broken holidays. Just broken.

September

When Ari left this earth, her death left my family in pieces. The same weekend that she was killed, our parents were celebrating their anniversary. They were planning their annual trip to Atlantic City. But they could never have anticipated a celebration of their union would be ruined forever. I remember days after the accident happened, I overheard my mom explaining how she felt that night.

She shared that the night of the accident, she was having trouble sleeping. She explained that she was anxious and she didn’t know why. She thought maybe it was just stress, so she tried going back to sleep. But the feeling would not go away. She believed in the moments she was feeling anxious, the accident was happening. I truly believe that anxiety she was feeling, was from the pain that was being inflicted on Ari. I’m sure of it. The feeling my mother had was no coincidence. It was the feeling of loss, the feeling of change, the feeling of broken-ness. That is how she will always remember their last anniversary. The day of remembering a union, celebrating love, honoring the day they started our family… tarnished forever. How do you celebrate a life of love and growth when a big part of your family is missing? I cry for them, I pray for them, I do my best to be strong for them, but that day will forever be broken.

October

Remember fall got cold early? October was definitely cold and of course, dark. Because of…Halloween. During this month, I had so many dreams. It felt as though I had never dreamed before, and suddenly they were all coming at once. It could have been because the holidays were coming up and this is the time I felt lost the most.

About a week or two before Halloween I had a dream I’d never forget. In my dream, I re-lived the day that she passed. Everybody was on my lawn, in my house… everywhere. I was outside and I saw some of my friends leaning on Ari’s car. Then the dream went silent. You ever see in the movies where everything gets quick and then all of a sudden everything was in slow motion? Only in my dream, I was the one in slow motion. I turned my head to the right extremely slow and there she was. She was radiant and as beautiful as she always is. I asked “what are you doing here?” She responded “I’m only here for just one day”. As she slowly turned to make her way inside of the house she was glowing, like an actual glow. I started running after her like the kid sister I’ve always been.

She immediately went to the basement, as she was walking down the stairs I was literally on her heels. I asked, “Ari, do you watch me sometimes?” She responded, “Yes Tot, sometimes.” But her response was so like her. It was as if she was saying, girl sometimes but it’s all on you now, buck up. That’s how I knew it was her. She made her way back upstairs and now we were in the kitchen. I asked her if she was in heaven, she said yes. I asked her what it was like. She told me that getting there wasn’t like what we’ve been taught. She said that God is like our father here on earth. She explained to me that when she made her way to heaven he met her up there. When she arrived, God painted a picture of her life and explained, “Ari your life was like this, you remember you went to the store and wanting a pair of shoes? You got the ones you really wanted and you should have gotten the ones you needed. That how your life was”. She said, “God is like daddy, he loves you anyway”.

After that I had some clarity, of course not complete clarity, but it was better than nothing at all. Then, memories started to appear.

Halloween

I began thinking of our childhood and all of our Halloween nights growing up. The Halloween parties, the trick o’ treating, the costumes. Ari loved Halloween. Me? Not so much. Halloween has never been my favorite. When we were little of course I enjoyed it. We always had the best costumes. I always wanted to be girly and the prissy one. Ari was always a wild card but still always looked adorable. I started thinking of moments in elementary school and how we were excited all day just to walk in the Halloween parade. I still remember Ari’s dimples and her smiling from ear-to-ear that day.

As we got older, Halloween for Ari became so effortless, but for her that wasn’t new. Technically, Halloween isn’t even a holiday but for some, it’s a day to just have a good time. It’s that one night you can be whoever you want to be, do whatever you want to do, to just be carefree. That was Ari. To me finding a costume to wear on Halloween was like a job. I dreaded getting invited somewhere, because I got tired of explaining to people that I came to the party as myself. But Ari always put so much effort into her costume. She came up with some really good ones too. I always would scratch my head and ask her, “like ok, is it that deep?” Her rebuttal would be as such: “Just because you wanna be corny Tot…” That left no room for me to respond, I mean she was right.

It was her thing, I wasn’t mad, I just couldn’t get into it. I remember we went to NOLA for Halloween for a dear friend’s wedding. Like who would of thought that we would be in NOLA for Halloween, amazing. She dressed as cat woman but regardless of what she was, she always looked mad sexy. Good for you Ari. She did that. Her creativity, her sexiness, it made her costume unforgettable every time. I know that everybody, literally everybody has a moment of Ari during Halloween.

As kids, and even as adults, we would watch ABC Family’s 13 Days of Halloween together as a family (just us girls). One of her all-time favorite movies was the Halloween classic, Hocus Pocus. That indeed was Ari’s jam and we watched that movie every year about 5 times out of the week, it was just our thing. I remember seeing that on TV for the first time after she passed and my heart dropped. The movie, that feeling I would get when watching it with her, it left, it wasn’t there anymore. That moment was broken and it was never coming back. My mother was sitting next to me at the time and I could remember her asking me if it bothered me to watch it. Of course. Watching it reminded me of her and the memories that we have watching it together. But I had a little bit of joy knowing that she loved it.

That has been the hardest part. Re-living memories. But we have to. Just for her.

To honor Ari’s love of Halloween, I dressed up last year even though it was a struggle. I was a Jager girl of course. As hard as it was, when it came to Ari, LITERALLY nothing stopped the party. So why would I stop? She would say to me “Tot, you’re being corny, seriously”. So I won’t be corny, Ari. When I’m tired I’ll push for you. I’ll even put on a repeated costume.

I’ll try to mend this broken holiday.