I let her know that I would wait, always, with my door open and that I would try again in the future. I meant what I said then. But more time has passed and now I know that the time for my attempts are over. I must respect her wishes, though they go against everything I feel in my heart. I will never give up waiting for a time maybe never to come. A time where the life we shared and the memories we built would be stronger, more urgently felt than one senseless, thoughtless and selfish act.

An act of betrayal so profound, novels and movies and poems are written about it. I admit I’ve Googled “sleeping with your best friend’s husband” and the Internet is filled with people’s opinions on the act. None of them are flattering. Everything I read echoes what my friend said to me, and yet, there is a part of me that can’t or won’t accept what I read or what I was told. Yes, I think sleeping with your best friend’s husband – even once – is a rotten thing to do. Horrible. Wish I’d never done it. But I keep looking back on our past life together and remembering everything we shared as friends and it overshadows the horrible act.

But of course, I’m on the other side. I’m the rotten one, the betrayer. Culture is set up to flay someone like me and encourage my friend to kick me out of her life and turn her back on what we shared because of one stupid, selfish act. There is no “pro or con” list for this situation for the betrayed, no looking back over history and balancing what was and what could be. It’s kick the betrayer to the curb and close that door. And never look back.

I suck at never looking back in this instance. I’ve been cheated on more than once and in different ways. Because there is emotional cheating as much as there is physical cheating. There are lots of ways to cheat without actually having intercourse and I’m sure many of us have crossed lines we’d prefer our partners not cross with other people. Deceit comes in many forms. When I was faced with the deceit of my at-the-time partners, I chose to look at the grand picture instead of just the one act. I gave the benefit of the doubt allowing that person another chance to prove their love for me.

You just never know, you know? Good people do bad things sometimes and regret, oh so regret what they’ve done. I see no honor, absolutely none, in turning my back on a good person out of spite.  Out of anger or a sense of self-righteousness or whatever drives a person to do so. No honor at all.

But I’m not my friend. Heck, she isn’t even my friend anymore.

She is not my friend.

So I’m back at that last stage of grief – acceptance. I accept that the consequences of my selfishness and weakness are that I lost my friend. I’m not regretful I told her the truth at any moment because it was the right thing to do. Even if it took me a few years to do the right thing. I’m grateful for the time we had together as friends and will cherish the memories. I’m eternally hopeful that some day, in some way, she will remember me as the friend I was before that night.

And my door, my heart will forever remain open to her in case she ever wants to be my friend again.

I’d not exactly put him off, but I’d really not responded in kind either. I’d listened to his stories and comments without providing any feedback, good or bad. I mostly listened in a kind of awe as I realized how differently we remembered our past.

I couldn’t find the words to express what I was feeling about our past, so I decided to print out the posts from this blog that I’d written specifically about him. I took them all and asked him to read, keeping in mind that some were written prior to us talking again.

He read the post I’d written about our parents’ death first; I sat silently while he read. After a few minutes – a lifetime – he set the papers down and said that was how he remembered it too. He then said to me, with tears running down his face, “Even when it was bad, I knew we’d be together again as a family – you and me and Joe (our other brother).” He stood up and I stood up and then we wept together. In sadness and in happiness, we clung to each other and cried out our mutual pain. He said again he was sorry and we let our past go.

I left before he read the other posts but he called me later about them to share that he’d forgotten some things and those posts brought it all home. But we’d said our goodbyes to those painful times. He still spoke about our past at times, still asked me if I remembered this or that – sometimes I didn’t remember things he did and it was eye opening. Other times, I remembered it differently, and we’d start to bicker until I remembered that it wasn’t all that important right now.

My brother asked me once what I remembered about him when I was a teenager, as a father figure to me, and I responded, “what I remember most is how angry you were… just so angry.” He called me later to thank me for opening his eyes to that anger, and he wanted me to know I was right.

Jeff told me once he couldn’t understand how I could forgive Richard for our past, for the things he did or didn’t do when he was my guardian. But what I realized as I listened to Richard’s stories was that we were at a point in our story where we were both beyond forgiveness. We were both learning about acceptance. Because my brother was dying and this was our last chance. This was my last chance to grow the hell up and realize it isn’t always about me, and this was his last chance to face what he’d done.

The truth is my brother lost a set of parents too. He lost a mother and father who adored him. He had to be the adult, the big man – he was the one who everyone turned to and expected him to make it alright. He was 24, true, but how many of us are truly adults at 24? How many of us have to face the burial of not one, but two parents and the responsibilities that entails AND the responsibility of a 13 year old sister?

I never once really considered what my brother went through when my parents died. I got a little taste of it with my brother’s death now, and I feel great sorrow and empathy for the 24 year old boy my brother was at that time and facing such a daunting task. All these 17 years, I held on to this anger and pain about what my brother did to me. I never thought of what he did to himself. In the end, my brother lost his whole family – his parents, his brothers, his sister, aunts, uncles, cousins… what a steep price to pay when I believe, with all my heart, his original intentions were good.

I don’t know exactly what’s changed my perception of my brother but I can’t look at the past with the same eyes. With the same venom and spite. With the same anger and hate. I just don’t have it in me. What I see is the sick, suffering soul I saw in the hospital about a year ago. Down, out, sick, without his family. I never wanted that – not for anyone and especially not for my brother.

So I got over myself. Dealt with my shit and learned how to be there for a man on borrowed time. I became the sister he needed. Not out of duty but out of love.

He was my brother. He deserved his family. It was the best choice I made in my life ever. To let go of my pride, to let go of the past, to stop being a victim to my own perceptions – no matter how justified they may seem. I let go of what he did to me long enough to meet the man he became. And found something in myself I never knew I needed to find, didn’t know I was missing – I found a sister. I was – I am – Richard’s sister.

Maybe he couldn’t be strong for both of us 22 years ago but I could be strong for both us now. I wanted to be strong. This is what love is -this is what it means to really love someone; not self sacrifice, just acceptance.

Goodbye, Richard. May you be at peace. May you know that you are loved and missed by your family. You are loved by me, and I will miss you.

Good people die. Bad people live. It doesn’t make sense.

But I’ve also somehow always known that the beauty of life is its simplicity. That even when something horrible happens, you keep breathing, you keep living, you keep going. Somehow your will to live overrides everything else.

What a simple design.

I was thinking of that scene in American Beauty where the boy whose home life is unimaginable – a catatonic mother and an abusive father – still manages to find beauty in a single plastic bag dancing gracefully in the breeze.

And I remember… I, too, will go on. Until it’s my time to not go on. And everything else will go on without me.

It’s that simple. It’s that beautiful.