Photo by Keenan Constance on Pexels
Every year about this time, I fall into a funk. As the years have gone by, it takes me just a little bit longer to recall why I’m feeling so blue. And then it smacks me in the face. Today is the day my sister died. It’s been more than a decade, and the grief never leaves. The spaces in between the times when I fall into a pit of mourning become longer, but they never extend so long that those pits don’t reappear to drag me in.
During times like this, I like to remember who my sister was. I wrote this piece on grief and memory a while back, and I thought I would revisit it . We were only 13 months apart, and that was time enough for us to be so different and yet the same in so many ways.
All my life, I had always known that I wanted to be a writer. Words, stories, dreams, language — I wrapped myself in all of these abstract things. I spend most of my life as an observer. If somehow my crazy sister had convinced me to go skydiving, I’d be in the plane, suited up, checking and rechecking all of the safety straps. At the last minute, with my hands clenching and unclenching uncontrollably from the fear and anticipation, I’d back out. But not my sister; she’d jump out of the airplane into life with no fear.
Though I deliberate long when making decisions, I question them once I make them — daily. My sister would just know that the decision she was making spontaneously was the right one. Here’s a story to illustrate: She met her future husband at a Howard Dean MeetUp. We lived in California, and she’d never been to New Mexico, but that’s where the MeetUp was going to be, and, without hesitation, she traveled there on her own. I was living in Berkeley without her and got a call. She’d met a wonderful man (great!) who she’d be marrying in a few weeks (what?). Of course, I questioned her decision, but she never did. She had met her soulmate, and she knew it from the moment that she met him.
Always, she lived her life truly and gave of herself more than I've ever known anyone to do. She had so many friends: old friends, life-long friends, new friends. She made friends from school, from work, online, in the hospitals that she had to visit. Her chemo nurses would call her for advice.
She wrapped herself in life, people, and friends. I have also never known anyone with a stronger spirit than her.
I will forever treasure our days in Berkeley, eating Chinese food on rainy Sundays and watching cheesy movies like Space Camp and Clue and Clueless; the nights we spent freezing our butts off in miniskirts and clubbing in San Francisco; and our times calling each other, laughing at jokes that only we would find funny.
At my wedding, she made the most beautiful, heart-warming speech, and said that I was her inspiration and light. She joked that if her love was made of people, she would be China. Even now, as I think back on that memory, laughter bubbles up even though tears are stinging my eyes. But, my younger sister will always be my inspiration. I will never, ever forget her love, her kindness, her strength, her grace.
Comentários