At 7:22 PM today 11/10 it will be 16 years since my sister Susan “Tigger2” Richard passed away. It is very hard to believe that it has been 16 years that she has been gone. She would have been 48 years old this coming March 22, 2016 instead she died when she was 31.  Now as I look at soon turning 43, as the old teasing joke went between us the 5 year gap has narrowed to 4 years only to go back to 5 years the next month.

It is funny that old race even plays itself out with my wife Krista. I was born on the 15^th of February and she was born on the 23^rd. So for a few days I am a year older than she is. Then it goes back to only 8 days when it is her birthday.

There are so many times in the past 16 year that I have wished she was still alive that I could call on her and get her opinion on something or just to see what she has been up to. I got the new Duran Duran album just to continue her tradition of getting the albums when they came out. As I think back after over the last 16 years of my life without her. I wonder how she would have handled certain things. What would have her advice been on this or that topic.

Over the last 16 years my life has changed sometimes not for the best, and other times it has taken on a new path that has helped it to grow into something better. But the one thing that has remained the same through the past 16 years is the desire to pick up the phone and call a sister and ask her or tell her or just to say hey what is going on.

16 years, that breaks down into the following time measurements

16 years 0 months 0 days 0 hours 0 minutes 0 seconds

 or  16.0 years

 or  192.0 months

 or  834.8 weeks

 or  5,844.0 days

 or  140,256.0 hours

 or  8,415,360.0 minutes

 or  504,921,600 seconds

Most of those numbers seem so foreign to think about because who measures time in such a manner? And I guess the only reason I put them in there was to show that time marches on rather we want it to or not.

Seems like just yesterday Susan and I would go to Taco Bell or Subway and get something to eat then go park at Daniel Boone Park and eat it and talk about life, music, books or just watch the river flow past us.

Time I guess is much like the Kanawha River, sometimes if you look at the old river it seems like it is never moving. Other times you can see it moving past you at a very fast rate. Time is just the same, grab a hot pan and a second can feel like a life time as it burns your hand, longing to be with someone once again for just a second can seem like a life time of memory. Yet at the same time 504 million seconds has passed since she died.  

The current of life never ceases it just flows right on past us and before long we have missed the things that we once had and fear the things that are yet to come down the flow.

I must end this now, else time escape me and I get lost in my thoughts, thoughts of the past that pull us back to a memory and a land of things that once was.

The pain becomes sharper and the thoughts of her laying in that casket turn to a mental image one that is too hard to look at.  

I leave you with the words penned by Susan’s own hand in a short story called “Promises of forever”

It was twilight time, that brief moment between light and dark.  What the sun leaves behind, the moon will finish.  That had been David's quote.  An eternal circle, that can never be broken.  The meaning of life written in the sky.

        "David, forgive me.  I should have remembered."  As she spoke, Analisa removed the necklace from her neck and tied it to the vase so that the ring would show underneath the flowers.  "You didn't really leave me.  You will always be with me, in the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon. Good-bye David.  I won't forget again.  I promise.""