Cheryl Ann Heffner Trimble died on 19 October 2010. Cheryl was my only sister. She was three years older than me and we came from a weird family - that only served to draw us closer together. We had two brothers (with me in the middle) and the four of us survived childhood on our own wits and by supporting each other. I do not ever recall going to my parents with a problem I had, we four kids went to each other and almost always to Cheryl first.
I wish I could remember my first memory of Cheryl - I have only disjointed flashes of things we did together, various crises she averted, and various disasters we boys brought on her. Our basement at our old house on Smith Street (Cheryl and her husband still lived in that house until the day she died - Homer, her husband still lives there) was a dungeon of fun, mystery, and scariness. We had a wood/coal furnace that looked like a huge, maniacal robot/octopus that scared the heck out of us kids whenever we ventured down there. Our trips to the basement alone were rare but when they did occur they were extremely fast! But when we all played down there, it was much less scary. My Dad kept five-gallon buckets of paint thinner or turpentine down there while he was painting the house. We liked to burn things and play with matches. My brother Tim started a fire in one of our houses once playing with a lighter. This particular day, we were using matches. We noticed that turpentine is very flammable. We lit a few things that were dipped in it - like torches and loved the result. So we decided to drop a lit match into the open bucket of turpentine. It simply went out! Cool! So we dropped lit match after lit match into the bucket - they all went out . . . until that tenth or so match. Floosh! The bucket shot flames up to the rafters above! The boys were in panic mode - should we pour water on it? Dump it out? Run? Get Dad? Or worse yet, get Mom? None of these solutions passed into the action stage, thankfully. Cheryl simply, without a word, picked up a larger bucket and placed it over the burning bucket and the fire went out. We were amazed at her coolness in crisis and her wisdom. We never told our parents. Cheryl was my hero!
Another day we were left at the house alone - this seemed to happen more often with us than with other kids. When my parents left and we were old enough to be alone (I think Cheryl was 14 or so) they would leave us with ice cream and other treats. Typically, we would use a knife to cut the ice cream into thirds or fourths (depending upon how many of us were at home). Sometimes we had a babysitter but we scared off every single one of them - my brothers and sister were very naughty - often I was the only child who behaved! Anyway, we were alone this particular day. The boys were tormenting Cheryl and chasing her around. She had had enough so decided to target my youngest brother, Tim. She chased him into the house. He threw open the door and quickly slammed the door behind him. Cheryl's arms hit the glass at full force, smashing the window, and seriously cutting her arms. There was blood everywhere. We boys, especially Tim, went into action and got towels for Cheryl's wounds and somehow got in touch with my parents. They came home and took Cheryl to the hospital. The boys were left behind. We cleaned up every trace of blood and patched up the window as best we could. My Dad eventually replaced it - with a plastic window. When Cheryl and my parents got home they were amazed that we had cleaned up. Cheryl was not mad - she showed us her bandaged arms and described her ordeal at the hospital and how many stitches she got. We talked about the incident like soldiers review a combat mission and discussed how we could avoid such outcomes in the future. I can't recall our parents saying or doing much of anything to us - just marveling at our cleaning skills.
Cheryl and I had a special bond. I am not sure why it was stronger with us than with the other brothers - but it was. We liked the same music and seemed to think alike. I loved talking to her and we spent hours doing so. We talked about everything - boys, girls, our plans and hopes for the future. She had a lot of friends and I got to spend a lot of time with her girlfriends - something I loved to do! I was kind of their mascot. But there usually arrived a time when I was summarily dismissed from their company - I knew at these times they were talking about boys or planning something to do that my parents would not approve of. One of her friends, my favorite friend of hers, I cannot now recall her name though - came over all the time. We spent hours talking and teasing and then they would kick me out. One day we learned that the friend committed suicide - I spent years wondering how this could happen and it scared me so much because I thought, "If she could do it - how about Cheryl?!" Suicide was something girls did, I reasoned, so I carefully watched and worried about Cheryl for a long time. After this, Cheryl drifted away from us more and more - more reason for me to worry.
She was more interested in boys and got into trouble with my Dad and Mom frequently. I still spent a lot of time with her but it was less and less. I was going through my teenage crises and she had crises of her own.
In 1966, I believe, we were all at home one evening - except for Cheryl. I am not sure where she was. My parents were wallpapering or painting her room upstairs. We three boys were watching TV - the Twilight Zone. My Dad yelled down at us to go check the furnace because it was too hot in the house. We argued about who would go because of our basement phobia and somehow I lost. I walked over to the furnace control - it was a switch on the wall that controlled the damper to the furnace - I never knew what it did back then - I just knew if I turned it one way or the other the furnace did something different than what it was doing. I looked at the damper and was shocked to see flames flicking up over the top of the doorway to my parent's bedroom (directly below where they were upstairs). I turned and yelled, "Mom and Dad, get down here, the house is on fire!" My brother, Mike, looked at me calmly and said, "You don't have to get so excited." That was Mike! My parents ran downstairs and we all grabbed a few things and got out of the house. Except my Dad, he stayed in the house and filled a large pot with water and threw it on the fire. It was way too big to have an effect. We gathered at the side of the house near the front door - the fire department was on the way - but we could not find Tim, our youngest brother. We went to the front door and called for him - right then he came running out of the house with our pet bird, Pat. (I would later accidentally kill Pat - sad to say). The firemen put out the fire with thousands of gallons of water that did more damage to the house than the fire it seemed. The entire house was gutted. We surveyed the damage and I can still smell the smell after all these years.
The fire was long out and we were living with relatives for what seemed like forever. My Dad hired a crew to work on the house. Orin Trimble was the boss and his son, Homer, was his main worker. They gutted the house and began the long process of rebuilding it. It took forever! But as the workers worked, we became friends with Homer. He would take us out fishing and boating - something my Dad had never found the time to do. Cheryl often went with us and we could tell, she was infatuated with Homer. He, at first, treated her like a little kid and was just as much interested in us boys as he was her. But that changed. The house was finished and we all moved back in. But Homer kept coming around. He took Cheryl out to eat a few times. Cheryl was 17 and Homer was about ten years older - Dad was not happy about this. But at some point Homer talked to my Dad and he gave permission for them to marry when Cheryl turned 18. They loved each other so very much.
Their first few years were rocky - Homer was jealous and ornery. That would not change much over the years until Homer found an even deeper love: Jesus Christ - a person Cheryl introduced him (and the entire family) to a few years before she died. Cheryl and Homer moved into their first apartment on Braddock Street (I think it was). It was a downstairs apartment in a large brownstone building. I loved it and loved visiting. I would go there after school or during the summer while Homer was working and Cheryl and I resumed our visits and talks.
The rest of the family escaped from our parents as soon as we could after Cheryl left. Mike went to college. Tim joined the Army at 17. I married and then enlisted in the Army after I got my draft notice. While I was in the Army Cheryl became a Christian. I began to be irritated by her constant talk about this "curse word", Jesus. I avoided her at times. But once when I was stationed in Italy I wrote her asking her to send me my Bible. She was thrilled; thinking her prayers for me had finally bore fruit. What she did not know was that I had bought a cool bookstand that needed a fancy book for it and the Bible would be perfect! The Bible still has a yellowed page at First Chronicles where it sat open and undisturbed for about two years.
Cheryl continued to pray and after I returned to the States my hard heart was softened through life's events and her prayers and I accepted Christ as my Savior in 1976. She continued to witness and pray for her family and one by one they fell to the Lordship of Christ as the years went by. Last of all, her husband, Homer, always close to God in his own way, finally succumbed to the power of the cross and, in their last few years together, they were able to worship their Savior side by side at Calvary Chapel in Bay City, Michigan.
Cheryl developed lymphoma a couple years ago and fought it valiantly. When she began losing the battle she asked if I would be tested to see if I was a match for a bone marrow/ stem cell transplant. I was honored and prayed that my blood would be the one to save her life - not thinking that Christ's already had. I, sadly, was not a match and as it turned out, it was too late for such treatments. I last saw Cheryl in Bay City at her daughter Laura's wedding. She was beautiful and full of the love of Christ. We had more time to talk than usual and she told me of her plans to enter a clinical trial for yet another round of chemotherapy. As it turns out, it would never happen. The Lord, seeing she had accomplished her tasks on this earth, called her home to be with Him. Her entire family and many friends gathered for her funeral to say their last goodbyes to the body that once held Cheryl's impossible to hold spirit.
Yesterday I got a call from Cheryl. It was Homer using Cheryl's cell phone to call his son Guy and in the small display of her cell phone Gary looked a lot like Guy. He apologized for calling but then we spoke for a while. He told me that he misses her so much and that he sits in their chairs in the evening and reaches out to her chair, next to his, to touch her but rubs the chair instead. He loved her so very much! I know that someday Cheryl's cell phone will be shut off and my name will no longer be there and my phone will never again light up with her name (though I plan to keep her number there forever - just in case). So, I wanted to write this - so that we will never forget my lovely sister, Cheryl. I love you and will see you soon.
~(30 October 2010)~