Goodnight is Never Enough

“Goodnight, I love you so much Smootchie,” she whispered across the hall.

You see, this never came as a surprise to me as my sister is the most outwardly loving person in my family. The rest of us tend to keep it quieter, saying those three words only when the situation truly deems it necessary. Rachel on the other hand will greet you in the morning with the mushiest kiss on the cheek and raves of what an amazing human being you are, never forgetting to remind you, even though she just informed you less than twelve hours ago that to your surprise, she loves you so so much. As for the rest of us, it is something we have all just become accustomed to. It’s nothing new when she smothers us in her morning breath, or won’t let go in a tight squeeze, because to her it means everything to constantly remind us that we are her center of gravity. As you read this you’re probably thinking, “oh how cute her little sister always says I love you”. Well you’re wrong. Rachel Hadley Jurek is twenty years old.

The three years that separate us make quite the difference when it comes to the content of our characters. She is and has always been the emotional one, and I on the other hand, despise emotions of any kind. However, what I seem to have missed throughout all of her “I love you’s” and giving no response, is a very simple concept that as a human race we constantly seem to forget. There is a question you should ask yourself when you are in a situation that feels uncomfortable, and that is “What if?”. What if that person with the coupons in front of you in line at Walmart, is really a father of several kids who is struggling with money? What if the traffic you’re stuck in is the result of an awful accident that took someone’s wife and daughter away from them? What if your dad is in a bad mood and taking it out on you because he had the scariest day of his life dealing with something awful at work? What if your mom is acting weird not because she has better things to do, but because she found out she has cancer and is afraid to tell you because if will hurt? What if?

This was the question I was faced with one night when my sister finally exploded, “What if I died and you never told me you loved me back because you were too “weirded out” by our emotional connectivity?” I had never thought of it that way until that moment. How hard is it to remind someone in three simple words, that only total out to eight letters, that you do in fact love them back? It isn’t hard, and that is what so many of us are missing. I know the feeling when saying those words feels more like someone is squeezing your soul through the small opening of a wine bottle and corking it in there forever, but what if you thought about it a little differently? The same way my sister taught me through her feelings of sadness and neglect, that taking time away from your own personal conflict to remind those who are most important to you that the difference between their beating, and not beating, heart really does mean something to you, is more important than life itself.

In Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, by Stephen Crane, Jimmie realizes that his actions, that for him were just routine, might have caused those he was involved with distress. He realizes in discovering that Pete has “ruined” his sister Maggie, that maybe the brothers of women he had been with in the past felt the same. It took this kind of thinking for Jimmie to look beyond himself and his personal feelings to acknowledge that he may have been the reason several other women out there were “ruined” too. Just as it took my sister having had enough of not getting the response she hoped for, for me to realize it really isn’t that difficult to think beyond your personal feelings for those around you. We often forget how quickly the people we care about can be taken away from us, and how in an instant our lives can be flipped upside down. Therefore, when I am in a situation that provides even the slightest discomfort, I remember my sister, the lover in the family, who reminded me that it is never too uncomfortable, or too awkward, or even too late, to say “I love you too”. Just as simply, “goodnight” is never enough.