My Sister
My sister is four years younger than I am. She is a free spirit, an incredible soul with a warm smile and giving heart.
Years ago, in the late 1990's, she was involved in a terrible accident.
It was the dead of winter. She was out with friends having a few drinks. A group of them decided to take snow mobiles onto frozen Lake Superior.
In the late night the lake is pitch black, the winds were howling, the outside temp was below zero.
The group headed out, the light on the machine did not pick up the hole in the ice until it was too late.
She and the young man that was driving plummeted into the freezing water of Lake Superior. The light on their machine disappeared into the water. Screaming for help was useless as the other machines hummed in the distance.
My sister, staying afloat because of her helmet was in the lake, cold and alone, waiting to die.
Her life flashed before her eyes. She told me it's not like you think, it's not like a movie. She said people she hadn't thought about in years came into view, people that had touched her life. She saw me, with her daughter knowing that I would raise her as my own. She saw close family friends with warm smiles reaching out to her.
She felt peace.
But it wasn't her time.
She managed to get to the edge of the hole, hang on and she was somehow found in the darkness. She was pulled from the water. When the ambulance arrived her core temperature was in the 80's.
The young man was found the next day on the other side of the bay, frozen to the edge if the ice, he did not survive.
My sister is a strong, dynamic human being. I'm so glad I still have her. We have not talked about the accident in years.
I know she still thinks about it.
Nursey
