* The Jen Network *

Shortly after Harmony was born, Mom went into the hospital to have her appendix removed. Harmony stayed with, if I remember correctly, Grandma F. I remember Dad slept late, and it was probably the first time I remember *seeing* him cry. (I tried to cheer him up with bowls of Sugarpops for dinner. Hey, I was 8! Gimme a break!) He was worried about Mom and whether or not Harmony would ever know her.

That's actually ironic, because he then died the week before Harmony turned 5. She had no memories of him.

I remember Harmony banging on the front door of the house because Mom had gone somewhere without her. Harmony was terrified that Mom was going to leave her. Again, the irony.

We would ask Harmony if she remembered what it was like before she was born. "It was dark" is really the only response I personaly credit, but, as she loved a captive audience, she would often go off into stories about what heaven was like and how the angels were nice and "there were worms, and um... dirt, and um... noses, and um..." well, you know how little ones are.

Back to her lisp, we loved to hear Harmony say her name: "Hah-mee Behf". We would get out the tape recorder and try to get her to say it into the mike. One day she wasn't feeling too good, and she was being stubborn, and I was being pissy:

J: Say your name. Say Harmony Beth.
H: No. I wanna go see mahmmee.
J: No. Say your name first.
H: No - I wanmommeey.
J: Mom's Dead! Say your name!
H: Nooooooo!

Yeah. I was a bitch, even when I was 10.

So away, Harmony grew up, I grew up (and out). I went away to college in 1991, when she was just 11. She said she looked up to me. Mom would show me stuff that she'd written about how proud she was and stuff. I never told her I was proud of her too. She didn't know anything before the life she was living. I had 12 years of promises to and from Dad and a "normal" life to look back on and grow from. She had nothing but herself.

She was 11 when I left and 15 when I came back. She was a completely different person. I was afraid of her: I didn't know her or her world. I tried to hide it, but I guess she picked up on it. She later said that she felt like we didn't know each other anymore. We had just made a start at learning about each other all over again.

Harmony graduated from North Central High School in 1998. She started at Ball State University that year. She'd been working at a Daycare for a while and she'd decided to become a teacher. She had a knack with kids. Like she'd never really forgotten what it was like. They loved the way she could be an adult and still relate to them - not talk down to them or make them feel small or stupid. Each child felt special with "Miss Harmony".

At one point, Harmony moved in with our brother. He was three years older than she, but they were very close. When they were kids they were always found together, usually trying to look extremely innocent about something, and even later in life they often just got together to hang out.

It was while she was living with Bill that she met and fell in love with Tim. She bullied him into returning to Muncie with her and getting his degree in computer science. He finally did, and they lived together with their 2 kids (cats) in a small rental house just outside of campus.

This year, Harmony was going to be student-teaching here in Indianapolis. She and Tim moved back to Indy and set up house in a rented house (still small) with their now 3 kids (cats) just a few blocks outside of downtown. She was teaching a church summercamp until the school year started. Both Tim and Harmony were enrolled at IUPUI, ready to start the next school year.

Harmony had a student-teachers conference at Ball State. She was going to stay the night and head back on Wednesday. She drove up on Tuesday afternoon. At about 1pm, the tread seperated from her right rear tyre, throwing her across the I69 median- into oncoming traffic. She was struck and killed instantly. Her tyre, the only Firestone on the vehicle, was still fully inflated the next day when Tim, Bill, and Matt drove up to take photos of the car.

We had her service August 12, 2001, at Harry W. Moore funeral home, 82nd and Alisonville. The same place we had Dad's service. On purpose. It was funny, I thought, because I went to the restroom just before the service started, and Violet followed me in with Gabe. I waited as they finished up, making us both the last to be seated. The funny part was that at Dad's funeral Violet and I were the last ones to be seated: we were fooling about in the bathroom.

The people flowed into the home constantly throughout the calling. As I walked to my seat to start the actual service, I was amazed at the number of people in the "audience": there were so many that some were standing in the doorways, unable to get in. I later found out that they had even opened the back room, trying to squeeze people in. The director said that over a hundred people had come through the door.

The service was packed with flowers. My friend from St. Louis called a local flower shop and they said that they already had 50 orders for Harmony's service.

At the service, Tim spoke first. Then me, then Violet, Bill, Mom, and Matt. After that, a friend of Aunt Martha's got up and read a poem that Martha had written for Harmony. Then a friend of Harmony's got up and spoke a few words. Or cried a few words, rather. She could hardly speak.

The service was short, but lovely. In the end, Harmony was cremated. We had set out a memory box and a notebook so that people could write Harmony notes. After the service, I checked and the box was full. Tim looked at a few, but said that they were for Harmony, and we put the box in to be burned with her.

I am putting this page up to remember my baby sister. I will put up another page for Tim. They were to be married this coming May, and so I will consider him my brother-in-law. Heck, I have been talking about him as such for the past year anyway, why stop now.

I am doing okay. I have the advantage over most of my family: I knew she was going to die. I knew she would die before she was thirty, in a car-related incident, without children, unmarried. I say "knew", but really, it was more of a feeling... a dream... something I saw once. I also know that I will see her again. We've been through many lives together, and we will be together again. Sometime, somewhere, somehow. Or so *I* believe.

So you could say that I was a bit more prepared for this. It still bothers me that I can't pick up the phone and call her. That she won't read my e-mails. That she won't be knocking on the door to borrow a book. That she won't come and pick up her towel or her hamper or her stuffed animals or her porcelain doll or the copy I made for her of the Grandpa Jones CD I finally found. That she won't meet her third nephew. That it had to be her that taught Nathan and Gabe about death and "heaven".

So. Yeah. I miss ya, Harms.