When life delivers a triple jinx

Jessica Ripka writes about finding her way through compounding tragedy

In 2020, Jessica Ripka’s sister and brother-in-law died, leaving her with the care of her nieces and nephew, who had been raised isolated from the world in a religious, homeschooled home. Jessica wrote about that experience in 2021 for this newsletter. And so many of you generously donated to her GoFundMe. Three years and a custody battle later, Jessica wrote an update for us. It’s an essay about faith, home, loss, fear and hope. – Lyz 

Here’s how the story goes: One day my sister died and then I died, too.

Technically my sister’s husband died first — 3 weeks before Christmas 2020, after collapsing in their Maryland home from untreated diabetes. Back then everyone seemed to be dying. But six months later, when my sister suffocated from a blood clot in her lungs at the age of 44, I couldn’t believe it. I got the call on a Monday while I was in Los Angeles working on a Ryan Gosling movie for Netflix. My aunt had to tell me because my mom was still sitting in shock with my sister’s body and couldn’t bear to repeat the words She’s gone. My  coworker who saw me sink to the ground at the news limped me to my car and then booked me a 10-day bereavement flight to Baltimore. She and another co-worker set up a GoFundMe page and I eventually hugged my department goodbye. Everyone probably knew I wasn’t coming back.

Everyone but me.

The next 10 days quickly grew into 10 weeks that still loop as a fever dream in my mind during my rare moments of quiet. My sister’s two older children — ages 9 and 11 at the time — running to hug me in the gravel driveway of their parents’ disheveled home; their pale limbs dressed in ill-fitting unwashed clothes. My sister’s youngest — age 5 back then — nonverbal and listless with a frayed head of braided hair and mouth full of cavities. A cop and a social worker advising my mom and me to leave my sister’s house immediately to get emergency custody. The hotel rooms we rented that summer—always two at a time so the kids could play, sleep and eat in one while my mom and I could slip away to the other to make phone calls, store my sister’s ashes and weep. The cloudless day in August 2021 when we closed on the ranch house I eventually purchased outside Baltimore for the kids; the energy so bright and brilliant, I pictured a film camera on a crane lifting high above the property as movie credits rolled. The feeling we  had just survived something grand and our story could finally finish. I should have known then: Our story was just beginning and it was getting so much worse.

My sister, brother and I were all raised in the gauzy evangelical days of the 1980s and ‘90s. My parents ran the praise and worship team at a growing Pentecostal church in Silver Spring, Maryland, and all three of us kids played a role in establishing their starchy limited brand. Despite my dad’s low church salary, we still lived squarely in the suburban middle class that we didn’t know was evaporating before our eyes. We believed in faith healings, speaking in tongues and God’s miraculous provision. Perhaps had there been internet, we kids would have questioned our radical faith or politics more. Instead, my sister sank deeper into it while my brother developed schizophrenia. With few options after high school, I left Maryland in 1999, followed by a move to Los Angeles in 2004 and an official departure from the church in 2011.

In hindsight, LA truly saved me with its union work, generous health benefits and living wages. I spent seventeen years growing my career as a coordinator in film and television — running reports, tracking budgets, managing schedules and meals. Back then, I joked I was an “office mom,” not knowing how accurate the term truly was. And as my career advanced, my family back east would chock it up to “God’s blessing,” which seemed ironic because they were the believers, but their lives were rapidly falling into poverty. I distinctly remember a woman at the baby shower for my sister’s second child saying wistfully how she wished she had a job like mine enabling her to travel more. Ten years later, less than eight months after my sister’s death, that same woman sued me for custody of my sister’s children.

We were served legal papers on a Thursday night just after I’d gotten dinner on the table. I can’t enjoy a meal without music and the kids had blind spots when it came to all the greats — everything from Beyoncé to Beethoven, Stevie Wonder to Sondheim. I remember that night specifically because it was the one-year anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot and I made a pun about The Police.  I was cueing  up a playlist just as I heard a knock on the door. It sounds contrived in hindsight, like I’m making it up, but whenever I hear “Message in a Bottle,” I still think of a process server slinking off our porch like a snake and the signed paperwork he delivered mandating we appear in court yet again.

There are countless Bible stories I still remember even after all this time. Adam and Eve, of course. Noah’s Ark. The parting of the Red Sea. I have a healthy distance with most of them save for the parable of the Good Samaritan. Who doesn’t love the Good Samaritan? In a more modern spin, it’s perhaps the story of a carjacked Uber driver left for dead on the side of the road and ignored by religious leaders, influencers and politicians only to be saved by, say, a trans person of color. In my case, it’s the story of a right-wing woman’s three orphaned children languishing in squalor until her left-coast liberal sister takes custody to make sure they’re housed, clothed, fed and loved despite the unspeakable cost to herself. I may not be able to profess that Jesus laid down his life for my sister’s kids, but I can certainly prove that I did.

And yet, according to countless accusations over the 14 months of litigation, every sacrifice I’d made was a failure. Not just my career, wine consumption or premarital sex but also my decision to enroll the children in public schools, give them vaccines and play secular music like The Police. Even my published writing and private Instagram posts were used in the two days of trial as proof of my unfitness.

I’m inexpressibly fortunate the judge ultimately ruled in my favor, but the agony of that ordeal still hurts to the touch — for both sides, I’m sure. What defines a good deed, though — let alone a good person? How do you translate “good” to someone who only equates it with “evil”? Can there be any dialogue at all?

In my case, it’s the story of a right-wing woman’s three orphaned children languishing in squalor until her left-coast liberal sister takes custody to make sure they’re housed, clothed, fed and loved despite the unspeakable cost to herself. I may not be able to profess that Jesus laid down his life for my sister’s kids, but I can certainly prove that I did.

—Jessica Ripka

I don’t have to tell you we live in precarious times or that my trial, among thousands of others, could have gone another direction under different circumstances. Everything we’ve taken for granted feels in flux. The economy, environment, culture —  all of it seems off its axis; the wires forever crossed. Even my enduring career in film has all but vanished since last year’s writer and actor strikes coupled with the emergence of AI. After months of unemployment and a year’s salary drained on legal fees, I’m realizing the loss of my career might also be another death — all ahead of another contentious election cycle. I spent nearly 20 years securing my place in what’s left of the middle class, but now that I have kids and need it most, I risk tumbling to the bottom. Who knew my sister would die just as our climate, economy and geopolitical norms collapsed like houses of cards — an apocalyptic trifecta? When much smaller coincidences line up like this for the kids, they shout “TRIPLE JINX!!” on repeat. They say it with enthusiasm but I whisper like a prayer now whenever I read another headline that feels like I’m cornered. That we all are.

But maybe that’s the biggest and brightest trick of all. Here I am, a middle-aged woman sour on marriage and childbirth but fully invested in raising three firecracker kids. The climate may be ruined, the middle class may be gone and my life as I knew it may have ended the day my sister died, but I have no plans to leave Maryland. How could I? I’ve been here long enough for the nonverbal 5-year-old to blossom into a giggling 8-year-old roller-skating around the dining table blowing me kisses while her two older siblings have grown taller than I am and are invested in piano, rock climbing, camping and swimming. Our topics at dinner recently ranged from Shakespeare to climate change to the electoral college to Taylor Swift. Sometimes we laugh so hard, I fear we’ll all get sued just for enjoying ourselves. Each of their personalities feel like a Polaroid gently emerging before my eyes, taking my breath away.

And I’m changing, too — learning to move with it somehow. Last year, I took the kids indoor skydiving, where you trust-fall into a tunnel blowing hurricane winds in your face. Maybe I didn't flinch as hard initially because that's all I've done these past few years. Trust fall. Blow apart. Keep going. I didn’t expect to laugh once I was in there. I didn’t expect to cry either. The resistance you feel is immediate. Palpable. Hilarious, even.  It forces your body to react. But there was an instructor signaling me to RELAX, BREATHE or CHIN UP. Words to live by, really. So I straightened my legs. Flexed my arms. Relaxed my fingers. Kept flying. Let everything happen to you, I thought to myself from the Rilke poem as I tried to carve a path through the air. Elated. Terrified. But soaring.

Let everything happen to you: Beauty and terror

Just keep going No feeling is final

— Jessica Ripka

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