30 Years Today - The Loss of a Sister, The Family We Were, and Grief

This particular blog is my attempt to honor my sister's memory, to speak the truth about what grief really looks like, and to share how her absence has echoed through every part of our lives.

I’m not sure how to begin or end this, so I’ll just let my heart guide my hands and see where the words take me. 

Please bear with me as this has so many moving parts and I had to stop several times to catch my breath and wipe my face and control anger.

While this is a story about my sister, Deanna Margaret Pieta, this is also a story of the Pieta's. I did get my parents’ blessing to share this, she was their daughter, after all. But she was also my sister. My Deanna.

This isn’t just a story about the day I lost my sister, Deanna Margaret Pieta, it’s also a story about what happens after. 

About the ripple effects of loss. 

About how one moment can fracture a family, reshape a soul, and send you spiraling into places you never imagined you'd go.

On September 11, 1995, my sister left our home and never came back. That day marked the end of her life but it also marked the beginning of a long, painful journey for the rest of us...for my parents...for me...for everyone who loved her. 

Because when someone you love dies, it’s not just their story that ends, your story changes forever.

On that day, you left the physical world and stepped into the spiritual one. 

You were only 18 years old.

She left our Riverview home that day with her best friend Becky, heading to Zephyrhills to pick up her dad’s paycheck. It was supposed to be a simple trip. Just a normal day. The sun was shining, probably hot - because Florida. Nothing felt off. No gut feeling. No warning signs. Just another Monday.

My mom told me recently that they had plans to go somewhere that day, but she fell ill - as she often does around late August and September - and couldn’t go. She believes that opened the door for Deanna to say yes when Becky called. A small shift in plans that changed everything. How were we to know?

Not many people know the full story. Most stayed in their lane, didn’t ask questions. But I want to share it, not just to honor her memory, but to remind you that today could be the last day you hug someone, laugh with someone, share a slice of pizza, or say goodbye. The rest of today is not promised, neither are any of your tomorrow's.

We thought we had time. We always think we have time.

From that point on, every second, every minute, every detail became etched into my memory with painful clarity. As much as it hurts, her story deserves to be told.

I didn’t get a real chance to be her sister. I mean, I did for 18 years, but I don’t know if we were friends. I don’t know if she loved me the way I wish I had loved her. I don’t know who she would have become. I took it all for granted. I never imagined she wouldn’t come home. There's a song by Kenny Chesney - Who You'd Be Today. All the words are true...as hard as it is to listen to the song, I try to once a year. I wonder who you would become, who you would have married, if you would have kids, would you have gone to FSU, would we be friends, would I be the big sister you could be proud of?

We had the usual sibling rivalry. Just a couple years apart. We liked some of the same things, but we were different in so many ways. And like most teenagers, we were wrapped up in our own worlds - friends, school, music, whatever felt important at the time. We never thought about tomorrow.

I can’t remember the sound of her voice anymore, and that breaks me. But I do remember her sneeze. Funny, isn’t it? The things that stick. I remember her working at a hair salon, rocking a short bob, dyed vibrant red, even before vibrant red was even a thing. She was bold. She was beautiful. She was ahead of her time.

And she was mine. My sister. My Deanna.

I loved her. But I don’t think I showed her or told her enough. I can’t remember if I did. And that uncertainty haunts me.

On that day, Deanna and Becky drove down 301 toward Zephyrhills. It had rained. They were a few car lengths behind a semi. In the opposite lane, a van passed the semi, lost control, overcorrected, hit a puddle, and hydroplaned head-on into them. That was it. Three seconds. Fifty-five miles per hour. And they were both gone.

The man in the van survived, critically injured. Two cars behind Deanna and Becky was a doctor-nurse couple who stopped immediately. The first state trooper on the scene was the father of someone we went to school with. He couldn’t bear to be the one to deliver the news to my parents.

The doctor and nurse asked the troopers to tell my parents that it was instant. That it happened so fast, Deanna and Becky had no time to be afraid. That small mercy means something, right?

My ex and I were staying at my parents’ house because our AC had gone out. We were sleeping in a makeshift bedroom in the dining room. I was the first to hear the faint sound of that particular horn cops have in their cars - err err. I waited. Heard it again. Saw a flashlight. I peeked through the glass and screamed, “MOM! DAD! THERE’S A STATE TROOPER OUTSIDE!”

Please God, let him say she’s in jail. Anything but what is running through my head.

My mom came down the hall—“What?”
“There’s a state trooper outside.”
My dad followed. 

None of us were breathing.

You know that feeling when adrenaline hijacks your body: your chest tightens, your breath becomes shallow and strained, your mouth is bone dry, and your heart is pounding so hard it feels like it’s trying to escape your ribs? That moment when your lungs forget how to work and every inhale feels like a battle? That’s what it was. Full-body panic. A visceral, uncontrollable surge of fear and anticipation that left me frozen, vibrating with dread.

My dad let the trooper in. We all sat on the couch. My parents at one end, me next to my mom, my ex beside me. The trooper sat on the ottoman in front of my parents.

“There was an accident tonight on 301 North,” he said, and opened his hand. In it was her nameplate necklace, the one I had bought her. That moment turned everything to static. I know my parents were asking questions, but all I could think was What the hell happened? Was he drunk? Who’s at fault? What the hell?!

My first reaction was rage...because you can’t see my parents’ faces. You can’t see the light leave their eyes. I can hear my parents' hearts beating from where I sit. We are all shaking, my mom is crying...we were all in shock.

I saw it all, felt it all and could not protect my parents from what was happening.

The trooper left. We started calling people: Aunt Andy, Uncle Jimmy, Dawn, and others. Eventually, the house went quiet. I slid down the back of the couch and stared at the front door, convinced she’d walk through it any second. But she never did.

Later, I lay down next to my ex. My eyes were closed, but I saw a bright light behind my eyelids. I opened them and was surrounded by pink light. Out of fear, I closed them again. I wish I hadn’t. I believe Deanna came to me that night. I regret not keeping my eyes open. I regret not sitting up, not reaching out, not listening.

I regret the fear.

And then I heard it - a sound I will never forget. My dad is crying. Not just crying, but breaking. It was the guttural, soul-wrenching sound of a heart shattering in real time. It was a sound that didn’t belong to this world - raw, primal, and completely unbearable. Through the closed door, I could hear my parents weeping, their cries tearing through the silence like shattered glass. It was a kind of pain that I didn't know existed. Hearing my parents' hearts breaking split the air, and with it, split me wide open.

In that instant, something inside me snapped. The person I had been up until that moment...the Shawna who existed before 09/11/1995...was gone. She died that night too, in a different way. What was left was someone I didn’t recognize. Someone hollowed out by grief, rage, guilt, and disbelief. I didn’t just lose my sister, I lost myself. How do I save my parents from this?!?

The disbelief was indescribable.
The world kept turning.
People went to work. 

Kids went to school. 

The sun rose.
And I was furious.
How dare the world go on without her!

The days that followed are a blur. But I remember waiting for the toxicology report with my dad and my uncles. We needed to know. We needed answers. We needed justice. A trace of anything in that report would have changed everything. One, or all of us, would be in an orange suit if anything was off on this report.

But the toxicology report came back clean. Not even a Tylenol in his system.

Wait… you’re telling me my sister is gone <snaps fingers> just like that...because of some freak fucking accident? That’s it? That’s the explanation? How am I supposed to make sense of that? How does something so random get to take her away forever?

No one prepares you for the guilt. Even when it’s not your fault, it finds a way in seeping in through the cracks, settling deep in your bones. And then it came for me. That quiet, creeping voice: Why her? Why not me? I was the one who messed up, I wasn't that good in school, I was the one who caused the stress, the sleepless nights, the worry. She was a good student and daughter. I was the troublemaker. If someone had to go… it should’ve been me.

The aftermath of losing someone you love does involve you. More than you could ever imagine. 

Grief doesn’t just sit quietly in the corner. 

It rewires your brain. 

It changes your chemistry.

It makes you question everything. 

Grief doesn’t come with a manual. It doesn’t knock politely or wait until you’re ready. It literally crashes into your life, uninvited and unforgiving, and leaves everything changed - EVERYTHING. Grief isn't just sadness, it's a full mind - body - soul experience. And it wrecks you: mentally, physically, spiritually.

I don't wish the grief of loss on anyone, but I do wish more people got this: understanding that your grief and my grief are not the same. 

Grief isn’t just tears, quiet sobs, or crying so hard you have to catch your breath.

It’s rage. 

It’s numbness. 

It's complete and utter shock.

It’s feeling like your insides have been ripped out like you are a shell of a human now. 

It’s being shattered and still expected to function like you’re fine.  Somehow showing up to work, to life, to dinner - 3 days of bereavement should be enough time, right? On the 4th day I'm supposed to put on a face and just keep showing up.

Bereavement leave is a fucking joke.

Grief is chaos. It’s unpredictable and it's completely personal. 

There’s no manual, no timeline, no “right way” to do it.

Grief isn’t a journey, it’s a brawl. And you’re in it, fists down, face up, taking hits from memories that don’t play fair and a future that no longer exists.

And you just survive it and you're not even sure how.

You grieve what was. 

You grieve what will never be. 

You grieve the future you imagined, the conversations you’ll never have, the birthdays that now feel hollow.

Grief is love with nowhere to go.

It’s screaming into pillows.
It’s dragging yourself out of bed just to prove you still can.
It’s isolating yourself because people say things like “they’re in a better place” , "you're so strong", "time heals all wounds". I say this with the utmost respect and disrespect at the same time: Go get bent.

I understand people mean well, but can you just stop with all the little terms and just show the fuck up for the people that need you. What they feel is valid - don't demean it by telling them their strong! Tell them what they are feeling is WHAT THEY ARE ALLOWED TO FEEL.

Time is time and when it's gone, it's gone. The wound of losing someone NEVER HEALS. 

I don't want to be strong, I want my sister to be here so my parents didn't lose their daughter.

Time stands still for no one, and once that time has passed there is no getting it back.

I want it back, all that time that was stolen from us. I want to hear your voice and your laugh. I want to walk into the living room and watch you sitting on the corner of the couch with a Dr. Pepper and a whatchamacallit and not gain a single pound.

I want mom and dad to be able to facetime you from wherever you'd be in the world.

After all these years, we just want you here with us.

Death affects the living, it doesn't affect the dead. So, yah, they might be "in a better place" but the place the loss has left us in is a different place altogether.

Grief is ugly. It’s relentless. It’s not something you “get over.”

If you’ve never had to sit in the thick of it - if you don’t understand why someone grieves so deeply, for so long - consider yourself lucky. At its core, grief is the emotional, mental, and physical response to loss; but that barely scratches the surface. It’s the love that has nowhere to land. It’s the chaos that follows when someone or something you deeply care about is ripped from your life. It’s the ache of absence.

Losing someone to a random moment: a quick trip to the corner store, grabbing a burger, going to sleep and not waking up, running a simple errand and having them never come back… it’s so inexplicably indescribable and unbearable. It’s the kind of pain that makes the world feel cruel and senseless. How do you live with that kind of ending? My parents did not deserve this. 

No parent does. No parent should EVER have to mourn the loss of their child, make arrangements, and have the reminder of an empty room. 

No remaining child should have to watch their parents go through the loss of a child.

My mom became a shadow of the vibrant woman she once was. For nearly five years, she moved through life like a ghost; her eyes vacant, her spirit dimmed. There was no laughter, no anger, no joy, no sorrow. Just a quiet, haunting emptiness. Our bluebird of happiness, the one who used to fill our home with warmth and light, had vanished. I watched the light leave her eyes, and in that moment, I was terrified, not just of the loss we had already endured, but of the possibility that I might lose my mother too, not physically, but emotionally and spiritually...shit, maybe physically as well. She was there, but she wasn’t really there. And that absence was its own kind of grief to watch.

My dad grew quiet in the aftermath. He had a business to run, and so he did - day in and day out, like clockwork. But beneath that steady routine was a silence that echoed through the house. He was the old-school kind of father: the head of the household, the provider, the protector. Yet in those days, he became a shadow of himself, just a shell of a man going through the motions, adjusting to a world that now had one less child in it. The absence was deafening, and he carried it with a quiet strength that broke my heart.

Most days I wondered how mom and dad ever made it through losing you, because watching them try to move forward was hard as hell on me. Some days, I’m certain that if it hadn’t been for a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed toddler named Taylor, my parents might not have made it into my tomorrows. He was their reason to keep going - an unexpected anchor in the storm...a gift of love and courage. And for once, a mistake I made didn’t unravel everything; it became a lifeline. He brought light into the darkest corners of our lives. His laughter echoed through the silence, reminding them there was still something worth holding on to. In the chaos of everything falling apart, he became the glue: pure, innocent, and completely unaware of the healing he sparked. In the quiet moments when everything felt like too much, his laughter reminded them there was still light. His tiny hands holding together a family that was quietly falling apart. And somehow, in the chaos of my own missteps, I gave them a reason to stay.

There is no strength more sacred than that of a parent who has buried a child and still chooses to rise with the sun. To breathe through the ache, to carry love through the silence - that is a kind of courage the world rarely sees. 

As for me? I completely lost my fucking mind. No sugarcoating, no soft edges, just the brutal truth. My sister’s death didn’t just break me; it obliterated me. It shattered every piece of who I was and rewired the very chemistry of my being. Watching my parents unravel under the weight of this tragedy, seeing the pain etched into their faces, hearing the silence where laughter used to be...was like watching my soul disintegrate in real time. It didn’t just hurt. It changed me. Permanently. Irreversibly. I wasn’t just grieving, I was drowning in it. And the worst part? There was no lifeline. No one could pull me out of the wreckage. I was broken. And I stayed broken for a long, long time.

Nobody tells you what grief will do to you.
Nobody prepares you for how you’ll act, how you’ll react, or what lies ahead in the days to come.

You’re still here, but someone you love is not. 

Grief doesn’t follow a script. It doesn’t care about timelines or expectations. It shows up in the quiet moments, in the loud ones, in the middle of a grocery store, or while folding laundry. It creeps into your bones and settles there. It rewrites your story without asking permission.

It makes you question your worth, your purpose, your place in the world. It makes you wonder why you’re still here when they’re not. It makes you feel like you’re walking through life with a piece of your soul missing.

And yet, somehow, you keep going.
Not because you’re strong.
Not because you’ve healed.
But because you have no other choice.

You learn to carry it.
You learn to live with the ache.
You learn to find moments of light in the darkness.

And sometimes, you write.
You tell their story.
You speak their name.
You remember.

I chased the wrong kind of love from the wrong kind of men.
I ran from state to state, from myself.
I tried every drug, every drink, every “will this kill me?” kind of thing all just to feel something other than the black hole of despair and depression. To be honest, I did some shit that should have killed me, but God's grace saved me.

I wanted joy. Even a flicker. Even a spark. But it felt unreachable.

I truly believed my family was better off without me. The good kid was gone. What good was I?

I left Florida in 1997 and just ran: CT, TX, VA, TN, WV

Somewhere in Tennessee, I met a couple—M and A. I won’t name them because I don’t have their permission, but they were a couple who saw me. Really saw me. One day, M had enough of my pity party. He turned to me like a soldier, grabbed my shoulders, and said: “God didn’t turn His back on you. You turned your back on God. All you have to do is turn around and face Him.”

That moment cracked something open in me. Like a lightbulb popping on. I felt it. I heard it.

Fast Forward.

Eventually, I found myself in West Virginia, having moved there with an ex. The relationship didn’t last - and thank God for that - but something else did. I got a job, and through that job, I met someone who would change the course of my life. Her name is Heather, though I lovingly call her Feather. I don’t know if she truly understands the impact she and her family had on me, but I need the world to know: Heather, her kids, and her parents saved my life.

Gawd, she had the cutest damn blonde headed kids, a boy and a girl...and that little girl had that little girl squeaky voice. The boy had this whole body laugh that just made you giggle hearing it. It was all music to my ears.

At that time, I was still running from my demons; still haunted by grief, guilt, and the chaos I had created in the wake of my sister’s death. But something shifted. I stopped drinking. I stopped using drugs. I started breathing again. I was having family dinners, going to parks, learning which roads in WV had no signal, learning which roads had water coming out of the rocks, learning that a friend in need is a friend indeed!

Heather’s family wasn’t perfect, no one’s is, but they were real. Wild, loving, a little dysfunctional, and completely accepting. This West Virginia hillbilly crew wrapped me up in their arms and made me feel something I hadn’t felt in years: unconditional love. They didn’t care about my past. They didn’t ask me to be anything other than myself. And for the first time in a very long time, I felt like I belonged somewhere. Like I mattered.

I left my family in 1997. I came back to Florida in 2006.

Thirty years have passed (today) since Deanna left us, and while time has softened some of the edges of grief, it has never erased the imprint she left on our lives. Her absence is still felt in quiet moments, in sudden memories, in the way our hearts ache when we hear her name. But some days, when a waitress wears a name tag that says Deanna, or a call comes in from someone named Deanna, or the clock quietly lands at 9:11 or 11:24. I don’t cry. I just smile and say, heyyyyyyyyyyy Deeeeeeeeee. These little moments mean everything. They’re gentle reminders that we haven’t forgotten her… and maybe, just maybe, she hasn’t forgotten us either.

But this isn’t just a story about loss, it's a story about survival, about transformation, and about the unexpected ways love can grow in the aftermath of tragedy.

In the wake of her death, my family was shattered. My mom became a ghost of herself, my dad retreated into silence, and I spiraled into chaos. But somehow, through the wreckage, we found each other again. Slowly, painfully, we began to rebuild, not the life we had before, but something new. Something forged in grief, but held together by love.

My parents and I grew closer in ways I never expected. We cried together, we remembered together, and we learned to carry the weight of her absence side by side. We became each other’s lifelines. And in that closeness, I found a kind of healing I didn’t think was possible. My parents are the greatest friends I've ever had - we are besties! #IamTedsDaughter #TeDonna

Deanna’s story didn’t end on September 11, 1995. It lives on in every choice, in every moment of growth, in every act of love. Her life, though far too short, continues to shape mine. And through the darkness, I’ve found light: through people who saved me, through moments that grounded me, and through the strength I discovered in the depths of despair.

If you’ve lost someone, I hope you know this: you are not alone. Your grief is valid. Your healing is possible. And the love you carry for them is eternal. Get help and find support, give it to God and allow him to carry the burden.

Deanna, you are missed beyond words. You are loved beyond measure. And you will never, ever be forgotten.

Your Seester: Shawnee