Monday, Nov. 17, 2008, Anchorage, Alaska~

Dear Journal~

Mattaq here.  I'm afraid I'm not doing very well.

My beautiful sister, Sikik Grace, now dances among the northern lights. 

She died yesterday afternoon, about two.  She died in her sleep.  She was forty years old.

I was with her when she died.  She is now at peace, with Mother, Father, the other ancestors who have gone before her. 

I can't believe that Sikik is gone.  I find it being like a nightmare, a bad dream, that I can't wake up from.  As much as I don't want to believe it, I have to accept it.

Now the family will be busy making funeral plans for our dear sister.  She will probably be buried back home in her beloved Barrow, by the sea, which she loved.  She loved the water; always had done so.

I will have to call her friends (Jenna Aurora Doucet, Louisiana Sandusky, etc.) to tell them the news.  Understandably, they will be most upset. 

I don't think Louisiana will come to the funeral, but I am sure Jenna Doucet (as well as her husband, Michael) will do so.  They live here in Anchorage.

Our brothers and sisters will be in attendance, too.

I don't understand something:  a nurse's aide came in to her room yesterday morning and talked to us about salvation, how we are all born sinners and that the wages of sin is death.

The nurse's aide also said that yet while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, if we were to only believe in Him and accept his gift of salvation.

Sikik started crying when the nurse told us this.  When the nurse's aide asked her if she wanted Jesus to come into her heart, Sikik, who couldn't talk, nodded, tears streaming down her face.  She led her in a prayer, Sikik nodding her head as a way of "talking", and after Sikik lay back down on her pillow, she closed her eyes, and went to sleep, a smile on her face.

She never woke up.

"The wages of sin is death".  Is this why she died??  And just who is this Jesus-Person?  Why would he do such a thing?

Does this mean I may see my sister again someday?  Or will she be forever gone from me, my life, never to be seen again??

I'm left, feeling more confused than ever.  Stupid Dog-Children beliefs!!

I'm crying again; can't see for all the tears in my eyes; they're blurring my vision, making it difficult for me to see.  I will go now; don't know when I'll write again.  Just say a quick prayer for me in my time of sadness.

Oh, Sikik, why?? Why did you have to die?? Why couldn't it have been ME????

~Mattaq. :( >tears!<