August 19: Bombed and Burned, Two Years Ago, My Sister

Every other big city in Germany had been bombed and burned ferociously.  Dresden had not suffered so much as a cracked windowpane.  Sirens went off every day, screamed like hell, and people went down into cellars and listened to radios there.  The planes were always bound for someplace else--Leipzig, Chemnitz, Plauen, places like that.  So it goes.

Steam radiators still whistled cheerily in Dresden.  Streetcars clanged.  Telephones rang and were answered.  Lights went on and off when switches were clicked.  There were theaters and restaurants.  There was a zoo.  The principal enterprises of the city were medicine and food-processing and the making of cigarettes.

People were going home from work now in the late afternoon.  They were tired.

Dresden is a normal city in the middle of a war.  People go to work.  Streetcars carry people to shop and eat.  Theatrical productions at night.  Phone calls from neighbors and relatives.  If people get sick, there are doctors to treat them.  The citizens of Dresden go about their lives, unfazed and safe.  They have no worries, aside from whether they're going to have schnitzel or sauerbraten for dinner.

I think that's pretty much what everybody does, every day of their lives.  We get up in the morning, make coffee, eat oatmeal, go to work, come home, watch TV.  Sure, we have bills to pay, meetings to attend, birthdays and anniversaries to celebrate.  That's normal life.  We walk around, mostly oblivious to the bombs going off around the world, because those bombs aren't falling in our neighborhoods.

Those bombs can take many forms.  Car bomb.  Terrorist.  Nazi.  White supremacist.  Job loss.  Home foreclosure.  Bill collector.  Car accident.  Alzheimer's.  Appendicitis.  Bombs go off in people's lives all the time.  Shatter windows.  Destroy homes.  Wreck lives.  No one is prepared for the bomb.

Today is the anniversary of my sister's death.  Two years ago, she quietly stopped breathing at home, surrounded by family and friends.  Lymphoma of the brain.  My sister never saw that bomb coming.  Just a few months before, when a doctor in the hospital asked her what her expectations were for her illness, she said that she wanted to get better and go home.

My family and my sister's friends are still dealing with that bomb.  Sweeping up the glass and rubble.  Our lives have returned to a new normal.  Job and church and home.  However, for me, I'm always looking into the clouds for a B-52 carrying the next bomb.

Today, I will go to the cemetery.  Talk to my sister.  Tell her how much I miss her.  Leave some flowers.  That's what we do.  We build memorials at the sites of disasters.  To remember, honor, love.

Saint Marty is thankful today for the time he had with his sister.