Month: August 2023

Designing a memento of my sister’s life

How I handled the overwhelming prospect of selecting “funeral favors” and honored my desire to hand something tangible to those who come to the celebration of life.

As soon as we decided on celebration of life dates, I could not get it out of my head that I needed to come up with some kind of small token to give people in my sister’s honor. Honestly, I needed somewhere to pour my energy, to channel the excitement I would have put into wedding favors or future birthdays. Surely there wasn’t a search term for this macabre party favor though, right?

Wrong. It’s the internet, so there’s anything you can think of.

I spent weeks scouring the internet for ideas. There’s a lot of things that, frankly, I think are tacky or cumbersome or just not right. I didn’t quite understand my goal at the outset, but looking back now, I see that I wanted a piece of permanence for her. (A feeling, I suspect, that is a cousin of why I am going to get a tattoo in remembrance of her.)

My desired attributes list looked something like:

Not ugly
Not bulky
Not likely to get purged or tossed
Not so vague it wouldn’t be clearly about my sister
Not lame
Not single-use or consumable (though I will also be giving people red wildflower seeds as well, so I didn’t not strictly follow this one)

Ultimately, my idea came not from a list article about funeral favors (what a terrible alliteration) but from thinking about my sister. Since we were kids, she collected die cast lapel pins at air shows and some other vacation sites. I have a fair number, too, but she carried on the family tradition with our parents for the ten years I’ve been away. As soon as the idea of lapel pins struck, I was swept up in it.

How would I capture my sister in a pin?

Well, as it turns out, it would take not one but two to make me feel like I had done an adequate job. In three days’ time, I will be giving these to people attending the celebration of life in the town where she lived. I hope they like them.

One captures her aesthetic, music preferences, favorite color, and just a general vibe. She loved Halloween and metal and concerts and the color red, despite wearing a lot of black and white.

Custom round remembrance lapel pin for a funeral/celebration of life with a rock on skeleton hand that says "Sing the song of my life, put on a beautiful show" with two red hearts.

The other is her actual silhouette from a photo she took at the coast, set against an ocean backdrop at sunset. The colors in the sunset are directly pulled from a sampling of her many coastal sunset photos taken over the years. She absolutely loved the sea.

Custom funeral/celebration of life lapel pin in the shape of a hexagon with a female silhouette in front of the sunset sky and ocean that says "Meet me where the sky touches the sea."

I hope these pins will go on people’s work shirts, hats, or bags as they go about their days.

I hope these pins will attend concerts and county fairs and summer outings.

I hope these pins will adorn bulletin boards or knick knack displays in the intimate privacy of loved ones’ houses.

I hope that these pins will, every now and then, evoke my sister’s memory.

And I hope one day, when these pins remain but the people who owned them do not, someone will find them, wherever they are, and think, “Hey, a cool pin,” as they affix it and carry it onward.

Unknown cause of death

I never thought three months later we wouldn’t have an answer yet. Nor did I think we would be treated like the problem in so many ways.

I think each reason for someone’s loss comes with it a specific set of pains. There are different broad categories of loss, that range from violent death to a slow-moving illness to an accident, and everything in between. I can only speak with any authority on the kind I know: a completely mysterious death.

My sister went to bed on Friday, May 19 with a full weekend of plans, including work, attending a friend’s wedding, a short road trip, an air show, and quality time with her partner.

She never woke up on Saturday, May 20.

From the beginning, it’s been an agonizing experience for the rest of us. The realities at the scene of her death don’t match what the on-scene medical examiner and detective recorded; they did not accurately record the sequence of events, which still frustrates me⁠—what if this sways the final cause of death determination? Additionally, we still don’t have the results of her autopsy three months later. It may be another three before we do. And the few details we do have make me believe we will never get an actual answer.

The authorities treated us like naive family and acted as though we were definitely going to find opioids in her blood, meaning she overdosed. The physical examination yielded a symptom common in, according to the doctor who conducted the autopsy, only drownings or overdoses. She didn’t do drugs⁠—not even over-the-counter painkillers, if she could help it⁠—and her toxicology came back clean. Note to all the detectives and medical examiners out there: we are not all in denial. Some of us are right about our loved ones not being the cause of their untimely deaths, and it is painful as hell when you dismiss us as unreasonable.

Despite knowing the toxicology results, we are still waiting for the report. For the answer. They don’t share preliminary findings from the autopsy without blood and tissue samples. The tissue samples were collected and now sit somewhere, along with our shattered hearts, in bureaucratic purgatory. In less than a week, we will hold a celebration of life for my sister, but hanging over us is the storm cloud of the unknown. Honestly, we will be lucky to know the result by the end of the calendar year. And the result may be an official finding as useful as a shrug emoji.

In the absence of an answer, we all build our silent, mental mythologies about what happened. The narratives some of us construct are, in my opinion, a hindrance to the process of healing. Even more frustrating, the other parts of the bureaucracy don’t give leeway. Her life insurance provider is threatening to deny the claim because we haven’t supplied the final death certificate. We want to, but we don’t have it still. The mental, emotional, and financial wellbeing of her partner relies, in part, on this answer we don’t have. And we’re being treated as the cause of our own ills.

We just want to know. Is that so much to ask?

Now there’s no one that understands

Today I had a (thankfully private) meltdown over something that wasn’t worthy of that level of drama, but it reminded me that the person I would have turned to⁠—my sister⁠—is gone.

My sister’s celebration of life is in 11 days.

Our mom has, in part, kept herself occupied by thinking through the minutiae of the casual outdoor event. I know she needs to do this to keep herself sane. I know this stresses out my sister’s partner, who is focused on keeping himself afloat. I find myself playing this weird intermediary role to try to keep the peace, but it tears me up inside. Because for our entire lives, if something sparked outrage or frustration within the family, my sister and I would turn to one another. Originally in person, in conspiratorial conversation later, and then once we got older, via messages.

Today I needed her, and she wasn’t there. Because now she is dead. And I am alone.

I’m not alone-alone. I have friends. Our parents. My sister’s partner and I talk frequently. But I am alone in the way that counted, in the way I needed to not be alone. When I needed the only person in this world who could have understood why I got so frustrated as I helped our mom put together a printed handout for the celebration. When I needed my little sister who would validate my frustration, share a recent story of her own, and make it all okay.

I couldn’t distract myself with the task, either, because the task had me staring at photos of her. Her full legal name. The two dates with the hyphen between, focusing so much on the day she first lived and the day she died, eliding all that came between. A thank you from the family, just the four of us where there should have been five. (Her partner is family until he decides otherwise.)

My sobs were for the fact that no matter how many stories I tell, no one will ever have grown up with me. This magical, unspoken intuition born from a shared childhood, shared home, shared parents was ripped from me, and all I have left is the memory of how wonderful it was to have. I did not recognize how great sisterhood was until I lost it. I will spend the rest of my life confronting situations that stab my heart as I realize they would have been better or easier with her.

She would get it, she would completely understand me and this immense challenge, if only she were here for me to talk to.

[Poetry] Please Say Her Name

Your willingness to continue to speak of those we’ve lost is a gift. Please give it.

Please say her name
Its syllables a confirmation 
Of her place in this world
Its cadence a comfort
To my forever broken heart

Please say her name
Your willingness to speak it
Means she is not forgotten
The vibrations of your voice
Carry her legacy one more day

The last thing I ever said to my sister

On the spectrum of regrets the other bereaved people have, it certainly could be worse, but that does little to comfort me as I ruminate.

The last time I messaged her was May 6. Two weeks before she died. To be honest, that exchange also barely counts. The real last time was nearly a month before that. I cannot express to you how upset this truth makes me as I write it now in black and white on my screen.

It wasn’t uncommon for there to be weeks between messages. That hasn’t comforted me at all. In fact, it’s compounded the guilt. The time stamps are evidence of all the opportunities I didn’t take. The wrong choices I made, based on assumptions about a future that will never exist.

The last thing she heard from me, though, was a few days after our last text exchange. When she finally got around to opening this silly card I sent her, using an online service.

Inside was a short message:

Seeester,

I didn’t want to only have your address for the purpose of my background check, so I decided to also send you this ridiculous card.

LIFE IS WEIRD, BUT SO ARE WE. I hope you’re having a good day!

❤ Sarah

I have this card, now. It was open on the counter when I got to her home after traveling nearly 5,000 miles home. She never told me she had opened it, but I was told she had been very excited about it when it came. I hope that’s true. I wish I had written so much more in that stupid card. Is a heart emoji the same as telling someone you love them? Was a seven-word wish for a good day enough to tell her I thought about her often and wished her happiness?

The double gut punch of this all is that on May 19, the eve of my life irreparably breaking, I felt very, very content. A very important coworker and mentor was leaving, and I had written him a short letter thanking him and specifically explaining how he had impacted me. I was on good terms with a lot of people in the place I lived and worked, the place I would leave in a few short months. I distinctly remember thinking how wonderful it was to have no regrets about not saying something to someone, how pleased I was to have earnestly and generously verbalized all the things I would normally have just quietly thought before people left.

I had no idea that less than 12 hours later, I would be confronted with the unavoidable truth that I had not been as demonstrative with my sister. There had never appeared to be some transition that triggered a need to do so, I guess. As I sit here now, I think of all the hypothetical milestones I would have poured my heart out to her⁠—a promotion, her engagement to her wonderful partner, their wedding, them buying a house. I bought into the fallacy of there being a next time, and I robbed my sister of getting to know what I thought of her, truly.

So I’ll write it now, 84 days too late.

Sister, I spoke of you often. I still try to, but the weight of what I’m trying to say right now comes from you knowing that before you were gone, I did. In a sea of people who all do the same job as me, it was refreshing to brag about you being a culinary school-trained chef. People always thought it was cool. I’m proud of you for challenging path you took and the way you excelled in every kitchen you entered. People respected you, your work ethic, and your abilities. (For the record, I also always mentioned your insane black cat, your partner, the town where you lived, your love of peanut butter cups.)

Home would never quite be home without you there. It’s why I always coordinated my trips home with you. We were a set, a pair, and I needed that precious time to overlap with you as much as possible. As I write this now, I have to grapple with the fact that home may never quite be home ever again. Thank you for all these years of bending your holiday schedule around my travel.

For our whole lives, I’ve always considered you the pretty one, and it flattered me that you liked my style. I cherished all our sister shopping dates and when you would come to me to ask for fashion advice or a second set of eyes on an outfit⁠, especially in more recent times when that required you to message me. I would trade a whole hell of a lot for one more afternoon in the mall with you.

I am so happy you found love. I think one of the reasons I didn’t feel like we needed to talk as frequently was because I knew without any shadow of a doubt you had all the love, support, and affection you would need in your home, with your partner. You and he took care of each other in an effortlessly complementary way.

I took for granted that mom would tell me tidbits about your life, and so the time stretched long sometimes. I’m sorry. I wish I could have heard more of what I have in the past 84 days from you instead of through your friends. Your friends are lovely, by the way. I wish I could have met them with you at your favorite restaurant as a group, instead of somberly under the spectre of your loss and the vacuum you’ve left behind.

I’m proud of you. You found a way all your own and built a happy life. I wish you could have had another 60 years of time, because based on what I’ve learned since your death, you created positive ripples around you wherever you went. You left people’s lives changed for the better. I hope you knew you were a shining light for people. Somehow, I don’t think you did.

I love you.