They say you can’t go back home again.  And though that’s surely true for most people, it’s especially true for those who mourn.

I’m in Boise this week, where I grew up, visiting family. It’s always great (mostly) to see the schools I attended, neighborhoods I grew up in, familiar businesses and especially the faces of my son, father, and brothers.  Anyone who has spent half their life in a place where they didn’t grow up can probably relate to that feeling of GOING HOME…seeing the old sights. For most of us, that is a pleasant experience.

For me, visits home are always bittersweet. Back in 2007 we lost my beloved sister Judy to an unspeakable tragedy, and those memories color every visit back home since then. She was murdered in her sleep by her own teenaged son. His mental illness was misdiagnosed and he was obsessed with a dark movie (American Psycho) and eventually decided that his mother was the main thing standing between him and the life he always wanted.

So one very dark night while she slept, he bludgeoned her to death. And my family has never been the same. Not just because that teenager has now been incarcerated since 2008, but also because my sister’s death blew up almost every aspect of our lives.

How I would love to come back to Boise and see only the sweet memories. Since my mom has joined Judy in heaven, and my dad now lives in a facility that spoils him as he adjusts to life with dementia, things aren’t the same as when I moved away back in 1993. But the only pain I feel here is the pain of that horrid loss. All of my other memories bring the sweet hazy lingering qualities that seem to accompany yesteryear.

One day, when the time is right, I will write about those darkest of days. I feel the pull even now, though I pretend I do not; I don’t want to write about it.

My brothers and I rarely discuss Judy’s passing any more. Not because we don’t miss her, but because her life was so cruelly overshadowed by her death. And we never talk about her son. He got too much media attention for far too long. The tales of our family tragedy live on even now on YouTube, spread by people who delight in violent true crime stories (because they bring ad income). Some folks have even come to regard my nephew as a hero, not a villain. I dare not Google her name or his even now, because the search brings up too many sites that make me angry.

No, we don’t talk about him. We talk instead about who she was, what we miss about her, stories that make us laugh and sometimes cry. Isn’t that what we all want to be said of us when we are gone? Tales of the goofy things we did and said, shared with laughter and with longing, remembered with love? I could ask nothing more.

I want to be larger than life, legendary among my kids and grandkids, as my mom was. She brought the party everywhere she went, and I want to be remembered that way too. My sister had no such life. She brought joy and calm everywhere she went, in her work with severely disabled children and the lives she touched. Yet she lived a quiet life, a fearful one, in a home ruled by a violent and angry son.

Judy was not larger than life; life had beat her down in many ways. Yet she found peace in her writings and her prayers, in her work with children who needed her, in her love for family. And eventually in death. For though her son determined how she would die, the Lord granted her the peace of being asleep when that moment arrived. For that I will be forever grateful.