Michelle Renee Kidwell
5 min readNov 9, 2022

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The Vanishing

Dreams and Memories

Photo by Juliane Liebermann on Unsplash

Chapter Twelve:

In my dreams more often than not Rachel is very much present, so much so that I often wake up, wanting to reach out for her, of course when I wake up, it’s Esther and I, and we quietly grieve, over the sister who used to love to belt out country music on the Karaoke machine we got one Christmas. She was actually quite good. When I really got to missing Rachel, I’d play one of the videos of her singing. She had a gift, a gift I certainly was not blessed with.

Some mornings were harder than others, some mornings I did not want to wake up, not because I was given up on life, but because I felt close to my missing baby sister in the dreams that painted such a vivid picture, but I would hear Ruth bouncing in my room with such joy, and life that I’d remember the gift that was now, my little niece had a way of putting things into perspective. I had to live in the moment, not the past, as Bobe had taught me.

Thank you G-d for giving me the here and the now, and for letting me have the memories to cling to. I am grateful for all I have been given. I love you and I thank you. In Jesus name, amen.

“Good morning Dora Tali.” Ruth greeted in her suing song voice, it was hard to have a bad day after that.

Esther reminded me often, that my dreams did not have to die, that the gunshot wound did not have to be the end to my dreams of being a Mother. She gently reminded me that I could still be a Mother even if I could not carry a Baby in my womb. Honestly we did not know whether or not I could carry a child to term, but that did not necessarily mean I could not be a Mother. But there were a lot of things we did not know until they happened, a lot of questions that remained unanswered until the last minute. And sometimes we would not know the answers in this lifetime. G-d would choose not to reveal them to us out of his wisdom.

“Good Morning Esther.” I’d smile no matter my word, and slowly sit up. As I thought about the things I used to take for granted, even simple things like sitting up could be challenging when only half of your body worked as it should. But though I grieved over all I had lost, I knew I could not let myself be defined by it.

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Michelle Renee Kidwell

Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge in the light: Helen Keller http://www.facebook.com/fansofMichellerkidwell