My sister’s death kicked off an impulsive desire to hoard. Not physical things, but relics of her existence. Photos, message history, screenshots of her social media posts so I could keep not only the photos but the things she said about them, and when. I have thousands of photos now, mostly from 2016 to early 2020, but it doesn’t satisfy me.
I wonder if some part of my subconscious thinks that I can scrape together enough two-dimensional moments in time that somehow the sum of their parts is her. No matter how many times I affirm to myself that finding more photos won’t change the fact that she is gone, she is dead, I can’t stop. It’s practically compulsive.
Every time someone tells me a story about her, as soon as it won’t look weird, I jot notes down. I home and flesh out the story to the best of my ability. Memory is so unreliable, I want to externalize every single scrap of information I can.
It is starting to feel like I am her biographer. Unofficially, of course. And my focus is so intently on the years since we stopped living in the same home. In 2013 I left the country and she went off to school. Our lives diverged, and I stopped knowing the day-by-day realities of her life. That was okay with me when she was just a text or phone call away, but now that I have lost her, I want every bit of her that ever existed before.
I can’t tell you if this is healthy or healing in any way, but it has given me purpose around my constant thoughts of her, so for now, it will continue.
Unmoored Sister 