I sure was affected by the 1975 lie. I had an older sister who had passed away. She was 6 and I was 5, and we were very close. We looked so much alike that people often mistook us for twins. I still remember at that tender age what she was wearing while she was laying in her casket. She was wearing a very pretty red velvet dress with white poofy short sleeves, white ankle socks trimmed in lace, and black patent dress shoes, I was not supposed to touch her while she lay in her casket, but I did. Even to this day I still remember how cold her little arm was.
She was the reason mom became a JW, my sister had died in 1974, and our cousin (a JW) told mom that in the fall of 1975 this old system of things will pass away, and if she became a JW, she would survive it and be reunited with her daughter once again. This lie was, in turn, was told to me, because mom was so excited about this. I didn't quite understand at the time the whole concept of Armageddon and the death of the majority of the population. All I knew was that I would soon get to see my sister and that we would get to play with each other once again. But 1975 came and gone, 1976 came and gone, and so on. The sad part was I would remember going to bed and crying myself to sleep for many years after that because I still was missing my older sister. Where was she, she was supposed to be back in my life, but she was still gone. Instead of allowing a child to go through the normal grief, I was fed nothing but lies which kept my hope up, until I had to face the reality of the real truth about the matter.
