In the seven months I’ve been without my sister, a lot of firsts have come and gone.
Halloween (her favorite).
Thanksgiving.
My birthday.
Our mom’s birthday.
Christmas looms large on the horizon now, and I can’t stop myself from sort of dreading my trip home. My trip to our family home where I’ve never spent a single Christmas without her. I don’t know how to prepare myself to bear what is to come. Christmas, then the new year, then her birthday shortly after… this never-ending cascade of occasions that should be happy but instead feel muted, dull, and sometimes tiresome.
I think it’s been hard for people around me to understand why I’m not filled with holiday spirit OR filled with despair. More often than not, it’s an apathy toward festive things right now. I think some part of me knows if I treat these big moments as just another Tuesday, I can handle crossing the threshold from The First ___ Without Her to the next room, labeled The Rest of the ____ Without Her.
I am doing things differently because I don’t know what else to do. I bought decorations (Halloween and Christmas) because they made me happy and would have made her happy. I have tried to find events and traditions I’d never done before so I could mark a year of excruciating newness with some memories of something good. None of it feels like enough, but nothing will, I guess.
Unmoored Sister 