Thirty Years Ago

What do I remember about November 4, 1984? Growing up, I knew I had one complete memory: I was taken from the bed in the hotel room and placed in the back seat of the station wagon. Dad then put Katey in next to me, her yellow blanket the one color I can vividly remember from that dark night.

Until I was fifteen years of age, I thought that was all I remembered about that night in Emporia, Kansas. I had dreams of a hospital, and an old man, and a waiting room with magazines, and being dressed in clothes that didn’t fit, and losing an official red baseball jacket from my college-baseball-coach uncle that said “Sis” on it. Visions that danced in my head like other nightmares I had as a child.

My mom never talked about it. And I never wanted her to. Going to the cemetery after school as a little girl in Tennessee made for the worse day ever. Standing there, now able to read my grandfather’s name on his stone. And next to that my sister’s name on her stone. William Harris Ogilvie, Jr. Christine Rachel Sturm. They made Mom cry, so I didn’t ask.

I knew I had another sister. I had seen the few pictures we had of her, stillborn. I saw her grave many times a year the three years we lived in Tennessee. And I knew she had changed our lives.

But in 1995, I heard the story. Sitting in the living room of an apartment building in Massachusetts, a young woman asked my mom when she mentioned a ninth child what had happened. It was the first time I had ever heard someone ask. And it was the first – and only – time I heard the story…

And I remembered.

Not just that dark night in the station wagon with Katey and her yellow blanket. I remembered the hospital. I remembered the night guard that watched Katey and I in the waiting room full of magazines. I remembered the meal at McDonald’s and the jackets Dad left in the booth while we went to play on the playground stolen and never seen again. And I remembered wearing Katey’s clothes because Dad didn’t know what belonged to whom. Pieces clicked together in a missing section of the puzzle of my life. And I truly did have another sister.

The story of Christine’s life and death is one of God’s hand of sovereign providence, grace, mercy and how precious a life truly is. Christine was born in Emporia, Kansas at the only hospital in town that delivered babies. We were traveling, coming back from the long weekend in Iowa and headed home to Texas. Christine swallowed something in the womb that made her sick and so made Mom sick. She was born – and died – early Sunday morning, November 4, 1984. Thirty years ago today.

The “incidents” that surrounded her brief life and death were many. A visit that afternoon at the hospital by an old man and his wife – the night guard who had been to church that morning and had come to let my mom know that they and others in their church wanted to help. Offers from friends in Texas to come up and help us drive back down. Gracious notes, many letters, people we hardly knew at the funeral. And four months later, when we moved to Tennessee, my mom’s distant cousin in the funeral business telling her not to worry. He would – and did – see that Christine was moved and placed in a grave next to my grandfather.

Some people change your life. Strangely, it is often those whose lives cross yours briefly that impact you the most. I never saw Christine alive. Never held her. Never played with her like sisters do. But she changed my life. And, one day, I will meet her Heaven. And hold her. And play with her. And rejoice with her.