Today I did something on a whim. Not exactly though, because it has been on my mind for as long as I can think back. I placed a permanent reminder of my constant mantra on my left arm.

four days til it’s all over and we’re happy

I immediately sent the resulting tattoo to my friend and family, and overwhelmingly I received the same response: That’s awesome, but what does it mean?

So, today I want to share the full story of how this came to be. Let’s rewind all the way to 1996.

My brother was a tech nerd. For example, he learned how to use tones from the rotary phone to connect to the Internet before the days of dial up and AOL. We couldn’t do much on this unknown phenomenon, but he was empowered to know he could access new things before anyone else.

First though, I will mention that in 1995, my 16 year old brother died from complications to brain cancer treatment. His reaction to this third treatment was vital organ failure and a doctor’s determination of brain death. My parents wanted my siblings and I to be okay with moving forward with the decision to turn off the life support, which we all stated we were. On that August afternoon, five days before his 17th birthday, my brother passed away. I was 12 years old.

Once dial up was up and running, we were engrossed with the new way to communicate across the globe. We accessed the chat world of mIRC, talking to people from Ireland and New Zealand and Canada, spending all hours of the day and night typing back and forth.

One of the things you come up with before chatting is your personal screenname. Originally I was just Sarah2001 (my first name and my graduating year). But in 1996, I felt I needed to make a change.

A teenage friend of mine from Kansas set out to help me figure out who I should rename myself as. I asked him how he came upon his own screenname, and he said well, Darrin (a friend of both of ours from Northern Ireland) asked him what he wanted his screenname to be and he answered “Not Sure.” Thus his nickname became NotSure.

So this led me to seek out Darrin’s help. He told me if I change my name it needs to be something that means something to me, something significant enough to carry me through the rest of my days. He asked me what I say to myself everyday that keeps me going, and my answer: “four days til it’s all over and we’re happy”

This is a nice story to explain how my email and blog and screenname became Fourdaystil, however, it does not adequately explain why it keeps me going every day to say this.

Let’s return to the details surrounding my brother’s death. His death created a deep grief and depression that lingered for decades for me. As a child, I often would ruminate on the alternate lives I might have should different choices have been made at points in time. To make sense of my reality, I needed to know how I played into the making of that reality.

One such rumination was imagining whether me speaking up at the hospital and asking if we could just wait three days to see if he showed any signs of life, would he be alive and with me today?

And I thought, it would have only been four days of my life and it would be all over and we would all be happy!

Of course this isn’t realistic. In all reality, my brother would not wake up, and even if he could sustain life, he likely would never talk to me or carry me on his shoulders again. And it wouldn’t be just four days…. It would be a lifetime of health problems and scares. And who knows if we would be happy.

However, I can now rest in the knowledge that life will always work through the hard times, and we can look forward to the day when it is all over and we can be happy.