sanctuary, a prequil to salvation

my cousin is the sister God gave me, and there are studio portraits of us as babes, toddlers and pre-schoolers our mothers had taken to prove it. He blessed me with more, but she is the one who shares with me that familial heritage and knowing. she knows how our grandpa's neck smelled. she knows how the back of my mother's hand felt. she knows how our family sounded when they laughed in chorus. she knows my dad was a good man, and the beautiful pieces of my dad's family as well. she knows me. listed number three in my baby book of first words is 'anne'.

after mom slid through an icy intersection and into a train that mangled her car and shattered her universe, i was given mom's purse. tucked deep in a pocket was a picture she had kept there for nearly my entire life of dad's baby brother. given to her by the photographer, the very last picture taken of uncle charley the day before the dark night he drove into a cow standing on a dirt road, rolled out of his open window and was crushed by the car my grandfather had given him - fulfilling his promise to do so if my uncle kept straight a's from kindergarten until that year. that year my uncle charley turned sixteen. what that picture, gifted to her, meant to my mother was unmeasurable.

the year i turned eighteen my world rolled onto its side, and as a sick finale just before my nineteenth my home had been overtaken by grief-stricken grandparents who armed their grief with blame and loathing towards my father and by association, his entire family. my father they directly blamed for causing the accident with the strain he had placed on their baby girl. physical abuse. separation. betrayal. financial ruin. causing her to be so exhausted, emotionally and physically, over that year as to be completely unaware that she was about to take on a locomotive as she drove to work that december 30th. and in darker conversations and musings: that mom had intended to do so.

no one had more animosity towards my father than i did. anger that was stiffening into apathy. no one carried more right to it than me. in that emergency room when my father entered i could see the torture in his bright blue eyes. lost. with the one person in his whole world who really understood and loved him unconditionally in a heap of bruised muscle and blood and tubes. i didn't want to feel for him. i did. i hurt for him more than for myself, my brother, and certainly my grandparents. and that hurt only made me more angry at him. and completely disgusted with my grandparents.

i gave dad mom's purse. i didn't trust him with mom's treasure. lost in his relationships, his handicap, and his clutter. i didn't trust my grandparents who were angling for possession of the checkbook and house key. inaccessible in their grief and warfare. i didn't trust myself. i could barely hold on to the edge of the earth so tilted it was. i needed this one thing to be safe. but more to the point: i needed this tangible connection to my family when it was whole, that my mother had kept close to her heart for so long, to be in the company of someone who did not hold the ropes of doubt and hurt and mistrust pulled on either side of me. someone whose only concern was me and let my doubt and hurt and mistrust be my own, and never borrowing from it. someone untethered and yet so wholly anchored.

i gave the picture of my uncle charley so beloved by my mother to anne. she put it in her purse.

maybe a week later someone broke into her locker at work and stole it.