Today I was studying vocabulary for the language I’m learning for work, as I do every day. It has been months since the family vocabulary upset me. I took it in stride when we learned “to pass away.” I made it through difficult classroom discussions that the teachers didn’t know would pierce my heart. Hell, I even survived breaking down in the language director’s office a week and a half ago when she forgot that I had taken time off early in the course to attend an event in my sister’s honor, and therefore she asked probing family questions trying to elicit language from me. It was totally innocent, but it left me wrecked in its wake.
I would say on the the whole I am getting stronger; I am better at recognizing when I am losing my grip on the grief and can take myself out of a situation in anticipation of it. I can handle pricklier interactions more often.
But today, sitting in the cafe at work and studying vocab on my computer, the flashcard for “siblings” ripped me open in a way I wasn’t expecting. In this language, the word is a combination of the words you use to refer to older brother, older sister, and then younger sibling. That final syllable stayed in my mind as I left the flashcard app to come here. It’s still on my mind now. A syllable I never got to call her. Another way to represent a thing I had but lost. A complicated person who is in my life but is not alive any longer.
So here I am, sitting in a room of a few hundred people, trying not to be noticed as I try to pull myself together. The work day’s only halfway over, after all.
Grief sucks.
Unmoored Sister 