My Sister Became a Statistic

Living in the After-Place

2 Years Ago My Life Irrevocably Changed 

I’m ready to explain what happened and why I closed my office, shut off my phone, and ignored emails for a bit at the end of September. (Please know that I am going to do my best not to go into too much detail and my goal is to explain what I’ve been going through. Please feel free to stop reading this at any time and forgive me if it rambles a bit –  My intent is to be open and honest, to share and hopefully educate; but I know that not everyone wants to know what happened, and I fully respect that)

– I am My Sister’s Legacy –

September 23, 2018 was a normal kind of Sunday, until it wasn’t. The weather was beautiful and sunny, I taught a birth class and went home. A short time later, I got a phone call that my sister was seriously hurt. She lived outside Nashville and had returned home in late August after spending about a month here with me and my family. I heard police in the background, but nothing was making sense. All I knew was that my sister was being taken to the hospital and things didn’t look good. After begging the person on the phone to give my number to the police and to the hospital, he hung up and I let out a scream so unlike anything my family has ever heard. I waited all night for someone to update me. That update never came.

The next morning, I tried desperately to be patient and to deny what I knew in my heart was the truth. I paid some bills, returned some messages, and my family went to work like normal. By 10am, I was done waiting and called down to the hospital in Nashville without really believing that I would get very far in finding someone to give me any updates. Unfortunately, the relief I initially felt when it was confirmed that my sister was admitted there completely disappeared as I learned the severity of her injuries. Suffice it to say that my beautiful big sister, my hero, my greatest cheerleader and protector since the day I was born was on life support and there was really no hope for her. My husband came home from work as soon as he could after I called him and we made the long drive down.

I had learned that she had been transferred from a smaller hospital that could not provide her the level of care she required.  I also learned that she had been left alone – no one had followed up at all. No one provided any medical history, direction of care…nothing until I called that Monday morning. The nurse actually said “Thank God you called, we’ve been waiting for someone to claim her”. It took me months to realize that the large hospital was the 2^nd one she had been taken to and that when I had given my number and begged that it be shared with the police and hospital – she had already arrived there, which means that several hours had already passed when that person had called me to inform me that she was hurt. The next several days were spent by me and my husband at her bedside, managing her care, and making the dreaded phone calls to inform my parents and brother. In the meantime, clues were being left that I didn’t realize until just recently as I attempted to deconstruct each moment of that awful week.

My sister died on September 27, 2018. In the days and months following, we learned that she had been living in a situation that was rife with gaslighting and domestic violence. On that day, my sister became a statistic: 1 in 2 female murder victims and 1 in 13 male murder victims are killed by intimate partners. (National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (2020) NCADV)

Looking back, I saw glimpses that things were bad between her and her partner/spouse who she had been with for several years. I heard the way he spoke to her through the phone while she was here and I saw some of the things he was doing, even from so far away, to try to control and manipulate her, especially in the years following a significant work-related injury she suffered. I fully believe that after staying here during late summer 2018, she had the strength she needed to create her escape plan. We spoke on several occasions and texted often. I was helping her set herself up for financial freedom, although I had no idea it was part of her escape plan and the only way she could keep herself protected financially. Sadly, she never made it past that point.

So, over the last 2 years I have learned a lot- about her, about him, about the signs that were there that I missed, but I’ve also found more questions. I have done everything I could think of in my power to take care of her memory, my parents, and the friends of hers that I could get in touch with. What I haven’t learned or had much opportunity to do is to fully grieve myself.  Along with the shock that I now know I was in for the 18 months following her death, I was diagnosed with “Complicated Grief” and closely monitored by my doctor in those first several months. The pandemic began just as I was coming out of that state of shock so I jumped right into “research mode” and quickly began to realize that the entire world was suffering shock and grief at how all our lives were upended. On July 19, I posted this message along with a link to an article about Complicated Grief on my Facebook page:

“I was diagnosed with “complicated grief” after my sister died (I am still somewhat protective of sharing the circumstances, but it was sudden and layered with complex factors, including a criminal investigation). It will be 2 yrs in September – I can absolutely say that for 18 months I was barely functioning. There was the “before” me and the me that was somewhere in this new “after-place”, a land so foreign that I didn’t even recognize myself and was afraid I’d never find any remnant of who I was.

This type of grief is absolutely deeper and more difficult to work through (I had grieved multiple family members before my sister).

If you have lost someone for any reason during this pandemic, but especially if it was COVID-related, please know that it is important for you to talk, even repeatedly, to someone you trust. Processing what you are experiencing and all of the complex factors will take time.

Lastly, grief is not linear and you will have bad days and better days. I hope that your better days begin to outnumber your bad days and that you are connected to support people who can love you as you find your footing in this “after-place”

I have an amazing group of friends, a few who know exactly what happened and who have helped me in a variety of ways, mostly to just keep getting up every single day. I joined several support groups online for sibling loss and siblings who have experienced loss through homicide. These are groups I never thought I would belong to. This life in the “After-Place” has been one that is navigated blindly, as none of us can be taught beforehand how to cope with this type of experience. In recent weeks, I have made the decision to use my voice to shed light on the topics of domestic and interpersonal violence. I feel compelled to be vocal because she was silenced. As a child, like many others growing up in the 1970’s and 1980’s, I was raised in a home with domestic violence. I have done years of work to overcome the patterns that were set for me. My sister and I spoke often about our childhoods and, although I am the younger sister, I had recognized the need for and began my healing journey early because I was a young bride and young mother, and I wanted to be the best I could. A therapist I had been sent to as a teenager had once warned that if I didn’t do “the work” to overcome those patterns, the risk of repeating them was extremely likely. I have remained vigilant through the years to ensure that my reactions to situations and my interactions with those closest to me have always come from a place of love and respect. Of course, I have had my moments, but looking back over the years, I can honestly say that I broke the cycle; but because of exactly that accomplishment, I feel an extra amount of guilt that I missed the signs of what my sister was living through.

Big sisters are protectors, and mine was a fierce one. I was a very sick child and had a number of speech issues when I was young. I suffered a terrible accident at 4 years old, witnessed by my sister, and it was an accident from which I should never have survived. Our entire lives were spent with her doing the best she could to protect me from any and all threats. Even as adults, she would call me just to make sure that I was being careful with my stress levels and nutrition, especially once I was diagnosed with a genetic liver condition that can at times cause debilitating fatigue and digestion issues among other things. Despite the fact that we have not lived in the same home or even the same state for decades, we were constantly talking, emailing, texting and were closer as adults than we were as kids. She didn’t want me to worry, didn’t want to add to my stress (especially knowing that my husband and I had spent the first 20 years of our marriage raising our children and also being caregivers for several family members through various illnesses and their eventual deaths), she always thought she could protect me. People who know both of us know that we are as different as 2 people could be, but we were the best of friends and our love ran deep with a mutual respect for the choices we have made and the lives we built as adults.

My sister’s mind was brilliant. She graduated high school just shy of valedictorian and went on to earn a degree from University of Michigan. She married her college sweetheart and together, they made several moves around the country and up the corporate ladder. She thrived professionally as a real leader and eventually found her way to become the Deputy Director of Food Acquisition for Philabundance, the largest hunger relief organization in the area. Unfortunately, before taking that position, her marriage disintegrated and in a moment of intense vulnerability (I learned much later) she created a profile on a dating site and that is how she met the man who would inflict the greatest pain on her and on me.

The thing about him is that we only know things about him that came from him. In other words, we don’t really know who my sister was involved with and married to at the end of her life. He spent as little time with any of our family as possible, even missing both my kids’ graduation parties which my sister came back for. There are very few people in her life who have ever actually met him. When we visited her in Tennessee in May 2018, she introduced us to a friend she had made after moving there and made the joke “they can confirm that (he) is real, not a figment of my imagination” and her friend made the comment “that’s good because I haven’t ever even seen the guy”. Even friends that she had since high school and those she made in her professional life when on the east coast with him can’t remember ever meeting him.

As you read this, you probably have some red flags raising. I did too, but I didn’t want to dig too far because my sister was very protective of him (he had a very sad backstory and childhood, according to him) and I deeply respected and loved her, just wanting her to be happy. I did ask her a few times over the years if she really loved him and she said yes; but now I wonder if she even really understood what a marital relationship of love felt like. As the years went by, I just kept ignoring those red flags and did my best to help her feel loved and respected by me and my family. I didn’t even realize that he was isolating her from anyone who might get too close.

In May 2018, as I stated, my husband and I spent a few days at her new house in Tennessee, bought earlier that year. Over that long weekend, we had a total of 2 meals with him. The day we went into Music City, he said he’d come, then he didn’t, then he called my sister and said he would meet up with us, then he called back and said he changed his mind. He didn’t join us when we played games on the last night – didn’t even sit in the room to socialize while we played. Honestly, I can’t say that I spent more than a couple of hours in the same room with him over the course of the entire visit, and not because he was working (he didn’t have a job).

National Coalition Against Domestic Violence states “The overarching strategy used by abusers is referred to as coercive control. Coercive control includes a combination of abusive tactics such as isolation, degradation, micromanagement, manipulation, stalking, physical abuse, sexual coercion, threats and punishment. An abuser may use some of these tactics or vary when they use them, but combined and used over time, they are effective in establishing dominance over their victim.” (bold print indicates behavior we identified with certainty in my sister’s relationship. Due to the fact that we lived several states apart for her entire relationship, we cannot confirm physical abuse with the exception of the act that ultimately took her life)

We have also since discovered that he, who never had a job for more than a few months, exercised financial control over my sister and all of her finances, even those from before they were married at a courthouse in 2016 with just 1 person there as a witness. We now believe without a doubt and based on concrete evidence, that financial gain was the motive behind all of his actions, including decisions that were made during the final few years of my sister’s life. National Network to End Domestic Violence states that financial abuse “is one of the most powerful methods of keeping a survivor trapped in an abusive relationship and deeply diminishes the victim’s ability to stay safe after leaving an abusive partner.” It also recognizes that “financial abuse occurs in 99% of domestic violence cases”.

Additionally, NCADV states that, according to one study, 20% of (homicide) victims were family members, or another person not the abuser’s partner. Immediately after my sister died, I became his target and have received many texts that ranged from pleading for sympathy to outright threats and everything in between. At times the texts came in a long and rambling series of multiples (10+) and if I didn’t answer immediately, he would send me a text accusing me of ignoring him. As I became aware of what he had done to my sister, I did refuse to answer his calls or texts and they have finally stopped for the most part. Unfortunately, he has texted my father and did attempt to contact several of her friends (never having met them) who then contacted me asking for direction on what to do. I have advised them not to respond. We have repeatedly experienced for ourselves and heard from those he attempted to contact that his wording and the framing by which he tells anything is from the position of being a victim himself. This is a very common tactic as the abuser avoids taking responsibility for their actions.

There are many more ways that my sister was held in her abusive situation that I will not go into, although I will point that a new and very scary form of abuse I became aware of is Technology or Digital Abuse. We know now that he had access to everything she did online and all of her accounts. It was in this form that he wielded the most subtle yet destructive control over my sister and also attempted to do so with me.

I will end this private (please do not share this password), and probably the only post I will write with these details, by asking you to help me bring awareness to the myriad of forms of domestic abuse and interpersonal violence and to beg you, if you see yourself in my sister’s story – Get Help and Get Out ASAP.

Domestic Abuse/Interpersonal Violence crosses gender lines, economic status, religious beliefs, age, race/ethnicity and education. It is done behind closed doors, in secret, and does escalate. It is often multi-generational, repeated by the sons and daughters who witnessed it in their own childhoods. But…

Victims can become survivors. Those of us left behind can help drag this into the light. The abusers need to be the ones who are ashamed, not the victims.

October is Domestic Violence awareness month – Please read the following stark facts:

• Since the pandemic began, calls to domestic violence helplines in many countries have increased
• Due to limited movement and stay-at-home orders in many areas, victims have been forced inside with their abusers. Many victims have become even more financially dependent on their abusers as economies around the world have been negatively affected by the pandemic
• Firearm sales in the US have significantly increased during the pandemic and nearly half of those are first-time gun buyers – according to NCADV about 1 million American women have been shot or shot at by their abusers
• Incidences of domestic abuse increase during pregnancy – 1 in 6 abused women report the first incidence occurring during pregnancy (according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and quoted by March of Dimes)

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your understanding, support, and love as I continue to adjust to life in the After-Place. Thank you for reading this.

If you suspect someone you care about is suffering as a victim, please reach out to one of the resources linked in this post to find out what you can do to help them.

If you would like to share this post with someone, please have them email me directly for permission and access. I will not live in fear, but I do want to protect my sister’s story and only make it completely public when I feel the time is right. I appreciate your respect in that decision.

10/8/2020 UPDATE: On the evening of the day I shared this post, we learned that my sister’s abuser had been found deceased several weeks earlier. It appeared to be at his own hand.

As you can imagine, this has caused a whole additional hurricane of emotions for my family and me. We are grateful for knowing that he is no longer a threat to anyone and for all of the support and love we have received from everyone. The healing continues…