Sarah

The first 39 hours after I knew

I didn’t know what to do after finding out my sister was dead. No one prepares you for how to navigate the complicated first hours of receiving life-altering terrible news.

8:08 AM Missed Call – Mom

8:09 AM Missed Call – Mom

8:10 AM Outgoing Call – Mom (6 minutes)

My Saturday morning started the same as any other. I was up prepping breakfast and deciding what order to tackle chores, a workout, and a social plan, my phone to the side. I didn’t hear it vibrate, twice. They were FaceTime video calls, too, which was weird. My parents never call via video without a text exchange first. I called back with some confusion but no sense of how much my life was about to change, in just 6 minutes.

I greeted my parents, both in frame, anxious looking. My mom asked if I was sitting down. I knew the news would be bad, but I couldn’t comprehend what it could be. Both of them were there in the video. I complied and sat down. With no preamble, she told me my sister’s partner had found her unresponsive in bed that morning and tried to do CPR but that my sister was dead.

I can remember her words verbatim, so I knew I heard them. But I didn’t feel them. I simply could not superimpose my reality with the words she said. It wasn’t surreal or an out-of-body experience. It was just like the part of my mind that ascribes real-world meaning to the things I’m told wasn’t clocked in for work yet. I stared at my phone, at my parents. I am pretty sure I asked, “what?” in a clearly rhetorical way.

And then the overthinking kicked in, big time. Why wasn’t I upset? I should be upset. I better respond upset. “Oh my God,” I said, covering my mouth with my hand. Obscuring my face would help me hide that my reaction wasn’t appropriate. You should be sad. You should be crying. Why aren’t you responding the right way? I felt my face start to pinch in the way it does when you try not to cry. I felt tears well in my eyes. Was I forcing this crying? Or was some deep, subconscious part of me bringing up that well of despair I wasn’t consciously ready to confront yet?

My parents told me to get there as quickly as I could and that they were haphazardly loading the car. It would be a 5-hour drive for them. It would be a 18-hour international journey for me. We ended the phone call and I sat, stunned and lost.

Getting home was a logistical nightmare. It required me to notify multiple people at my workplace and then set a bunch of administrative tasks in motion. Within an hour, news had spread to people I didn’t want knowing. I got text messages and phone calls from people I didn’t have the mental capacity to handle. It took three hours before I had a plane ticket in hand, but the flight wasn’t until 24 hours after the first missed phone call.

I was left in my apartment to ponder, alone, the injustice of the universe. To berate myself for somehow still not being as sad as I was “supposed” to be. To do an absolutely terrible job of putting things in a suitcase in preparation for the long journey ahead. To will time time pass, since it refused to go for me in reverse.

I scrolled through her social media and dissolved into a blubbering mess. I screen shotted a bunch of content and worked myself into a tizzy over how little we had spoken in the last few months. I made my eyes and nose raw with the low-quality toilet paper I was using as tissue.

I only remember sporadic bursts of time from that Saturday. I didn’t eat. I could barely sleep when the time came. I drank tea and did a lot of mental spiraling.

All night I tossed and turned. Every time I woke up and looked at my phone to see the time, I wondered, “Is this when you died, sister?” We didn’t know anything, except that at 5:16 AM in her time zone, her partner found her.

I was afraid to fall asleep and somehow not wake up for my alarm, despite the fact I had set three separate alarms on two devices to ensure it was not possible to miss them. If one thing I could count on had failed, what was to stop the rest of the world from crumbling in on me also?

At 6:30 AM I got in my taxi to the airport. On the way out, the apartment building’s concierge said the very normal human greeting of, “Good morning, how are you?” I couldn’t contain myself and started crying as I choked out, “I’m not okay.” He looked concerned and worried, but I had to leave. I got in the taxi, sobbing.

I arrived at the airport, barely done crying for the moment. I ate something because that’s what I was supposed to do. I got a tea that was so hot I could not drink it for ages. And I focused as hard as I could on achieving the task at hand⁠—being in motion and getting home to my family.

It was three flights, two tight layovers, and I had to rush during both. I nearly lost my mind when people took their sweet time getting off the plane and couldn’t find where they put their roller bags. Some of us had places to be. Being “that person” on the plane⁠—the impatient passenger acting like a bit of an asshole and pushing ahead without waiting their turn⁠—has forever changed how I’ll think of those people moving forward. I know that I was in crisis and just needed to not be standing still.

At 10:49 PM local time, but 12:49 AM the next day to my body, I finally arrived. I had held it together the entire time, not crying since my taxi ride that morning, on another continent entirely. By the time I made it there, I was too tired to cry. But I fell gratefully into my sister’s partner’s arms as I collected my bag and went out to the car to meet up with my parents.

There was a lot to do, talk about, and feel, but not that night. I was running on three hours of sleep and needed⁠—desperately⁠—to not be conscious. We went to the home my sister and her partner had shared, the place I would be staying, with her partner. My parents hugged me many times before leaving to their own accommodation. I stood in the house, a place I had never been before that moment, and willed my brain to not think about all the things I could confront in the coming days.

I told you this story, in part, because there was something cathartic in it for me, to recount the steps of my old life fading from existence. But I also wanted you to know that in that first 39 hours, I judged myself for my reactions, I had long stretches of forming no memory of what I did, I cried and then did not cry for a long time, I was a menace to fellow travelers, and on and on.

If you were not okay and are now berating yourself for it ⁠— please don’t.

If you were okay and think that means you’re broken ⁠— please don’t.

When you receive life-altering news that sucker punches you out of nowhere, you’re entitled to whatever reaction you had. It was a valid response. You are not “doing it wrong.” You need yourself more than ever, so please be kind to yourself.

“Wearing your dead sibling’s clothes”

That’s the Google search I made on June 14, just 25 days after my sister died. I already wanted to wear her clothes⁠—many of them⁠—but I turned to the internet to tell me if this was too taboo to consider.

I turned to the internet to tell me how messed up other people thought it was. But I had already decided on migrating about a third of her wardrobe into mine and wearing things, unabashedly.

So maybe the next grieving sibling who googles the same thing I did will come upon this explanation for why I (with a few caveats) think it is not only okay but beautiful to integrate the clothing of those we lost into our wardrobes and our lives.

Her closet has eras: high school, late teen deciding who she wanted to be, young adult grappling with her body size changing and not liking it, and independent woman who leaned in entirely to what she liked and built her life around it. It was only standing in her closet and observing these eras that I realized how much of her most recent era held echoes of our shared past and of influences I may have had on her that I never knew before.

Some clothes in that closet we had bought together⁠—going to a mall to get a coffee, walk and talk about life, and buy clothing was something we had done together since we were young teens. When I began to live far away, we still did it when I would visit home, calling them “sister dates.” For her birthday during the still-pandemic times of 2021, I sent her a nostalgia-filled email conjuring the idea of a mall, asked her to play the same YouTube video of mall background sounds as I did, and we hung out on a video call for a few hours digitally shopping. I sent her favorite pieces as birthday gifts.

Some clothes I had never seen in real life, but we had talked about. The dress she wore to one of her best friend’s weddings a few years back⁠—we discussed over messages what shoes and accessories would work best. The platform boots she bought⁠—only after asking my opinion, because I had worn that style of boots back in high school⁠—to be able to see better at shows stood in the corner. Dozens of shirts from events and concerts she had enjoyed with her partner. I was peeking in on a slice of her life through a hazy window.

Some clothes I had given her from my own wardrobe at various points throughout life. There was something sweet and also saddening about the possibility they would find their way back to me again. She hadn’t wanted to get rid of these clothes, for whatever reason. I hope it was, in part, because it was a connection with me.

As her partner and I, only two weeks after her death, dealt with the less sentimental stuff (the only things we could bear to work on) and I set aside a few things I wanted, I asked myself: Is it okay to wear the clothing of your dead sibling?

I don’t know. I still don’t know. But how can anyone tell me what is or isn’t okay in a world where a 28-year-old in perfectly fine health can go to bed and never wake up again?

In grief, there are times nothing is okay.

But I definitely could not handle the thought of boxing and bagging up every article of clothing she had ever worn⁠—every piece she had selected for herself, every item that defined her style⁠—and dropping them off at Goodwill like normal, everyday discards. If she had been alive and sorting through her things, none of it would have mattered to me. But to just get rid of everything would be a final loss. Almost an erasure that I was not willing to participate in.

I sat sorting through her socks and thinking about other articles of clothing she had. Things I could imagine myself wearing on dates I wish I could tell her about, to work events I would forever want to recount for her later, on trips we should have been taking together.

I will never be able to have my sister back. Our story is over, and it lasted just shy of three decades. But the story I can tell with threads of her life woven throughout it is ongoing.

Some people have spoken about it being like a hug from the person whose clothing it was. I have not yet felt that way myself, but it is a lovely thought. I see this as the final time one of us will be able to go to the other’s closet and nab a coveted piece to wear for a perfect outfit. An end cap to a sisterly ritual we had for half our lives.

Another thought occurred to me recently: What do you say when someone compliments something you’re wearing that belonged to your dead sister?

I have decided my approach varies, depending upon who says it and what I feel I can handle at that moment. But there are three responses, all of which come with a soft smile as I think of the meaning of clothes between us: “thanks”; “thanks, my sister picked it out”; and “thanks, it used to be my sister’s.”

To anyone also contemplating wearing someone’s clothing, I have two things I think you should consider.

First, while as a general rule, I don’t think it’s wrong to wear the clothing, this is a negotiation between you and the people who loved the person who is gone. I will not, for example, be wearing the dress my sister graduated in or the shirt she wore many times at work where she and her partner fell in love. Some objects become relics when those we love die, and it isn’t fair to insist on wearing something that will actively cause pain to someone else just to make ourselves feel better.

Second, I think it is important not to lose ourselves in someone else’s style⁠—even someone as beloved as a deceased sibling. In my case, my sister’s fashion sense had drifted very much toward mine recently, but I will still be very careful to select only the clothes that reflect my own taste. I am still me. My identity is distinct from hers, and just as I cannot wear something to cause others pain, I cannot alter myself in a way that will cause pain to myself. Tread lightly when you pick⁠—you want to treasure what you take, and be sure not to bury yourself in the process.

Author’s note: In my googling, I came across this blog post about the same topic. Maddie’s candid description left an impact on me and I wanted to make sure anyone who came upon mine would also find hers. Peace and love to you.

I wanted to blow up my life

I didn’t expect my sister’s death to make me want to burn my own life to the ground.

Tied up in my job is my housing, my healthcare, my retirement plans, and my actual career. Leaving my job would mean not being allowed back in. I had worked toward this job since 2014, when I figured out it was my dream job, and I achieved it in 2018. So when I tell you I wanted to walk away from my job, I’m telling you a major part of me wanted to destroy what I had built for myself, irrevocably.

Moving to the town she called home would mean living somewhere I already know I would never feel I “belonged.” I would never find a job using my degrees or my talents. I would give up disposable income, international opportunities, career satisfaction, and being surrounded by people who more or less see the world in a way that jives with how I do.

And yet, knowing this, I still wanted it ⁠— desperately. I wanted to run away from everything that had been true before her death and steep myself in the scraps of her presence where she last lived. I wanted to get to know the people she had loved in the community she built around herself. And I suspect part of me wanted to atone for having chosen to roam so far from home by chaining myself as close to where she stood as I could.

It has now been about two months since she died. I have not yet blown up my life, and the desire mostly receded. What has remained, though, is a new sense of being unsettled in my choices. I am staying the course I had charted for myself, for now. But I now have a voice in the back of my mind reminding me of the true cost of the distance and my decisions. That voice whispers to me not to feel too secure in the 5-, 10-, and 20-year horizon line. It tells me I didn’t even realize before that I felt safe to stray across the globe because my sister was an anchor that could tie me to home.

I don’t know where home is anymore. Ten years ago, I stopped living in the place I called home my entire life. Home is a complicated concept, made more difficult by the fact that my parents ⁠— the only remaining relatives with whom I have a relationship ⁠— now are rethinking their own next chapter. The state that is woven in my DNA might suddenly be only part of our pasts. The home we grew up in will be sold. The streets we drove, the buildings we walked, the places we ate will all just be distant memories. I haven’t entirely lost that home, not yet, but I feel like I am already mourning its disappearance, too.

And it’s only now, as I sit here and write, that I consider I didn’t have to make the conscious choice to blow up my life, because my sister’s death already set off a chain reaction that I can’t control. It’s already happening. I’m just sheltering in place until I can assess what is left in the aftermath.

Memories, where have you gone?

For anyone who has been asking, “Why can’t I remember any memories about my dead sibling?” Maybe you will find comfort here.

Note: I write this particular post 52 days in the After.

I am unsure I can fully capture for you the absolute panic of realizing that I could not conjure almost any memories of my sister after her passing. I don’t mean they were hazy or I only had a few. I mean it was like a scene from a movie where I desperately ran toward a closing door but failed to slide under it in time before I was locked away from all of them.

I could remember general themes ⁠— childhood summers, after school activities, general holiday trips home ⁠— but I could not recall any specific event or interaction. It was like she took all of the specific memories with her when she died, and all I was left with was a watered down medley of what it used to be like to have her. I freaked out. For weeks, I was in a low-level state of panic about this additional loss, which I am sure did not help my fragile brain in any way.

Even now, more than seven weeks onward, I look at photos I am in and don’t recall the interaction around it. I’m starting to wonder if a lot of my memories were already this blended sense of the past. Like I had condensed memories down not to individual moments but to a holistic memory of just being with her. The conceptual things we shared, but not the individual days. I still haven’t decide if this makes me feel better or worse. I know this is partially because in the past ten years, I have been away far, far more than I haven’t.

Does it matter that I can’t remember the jokes from one particular virtual session of Jackbox games as a family during the peak of the pandemic in 2020? Or is it enough to remember we had at least a dozen of those sessions as a family unit (our parents, her, her partner, and I) and we laughed really hard and had a great time? Depending when you ask me, I will contradict myself in my answers.

Does it change anything that I can’t remember specific shopping trips we took or precisely when we bought something? Or is it just as poignant that I cherish this blurred sense of shopping and helping each other refine our personal style being a constant touchpoint throughout middle school, high school, and adulthood? The compulsive memory hoarder I have become wants it all.

If you’re also out there grappling with the secondary loss of your ability to remember, I’ve been there. Frankly, I might still be there, no matter how long after this post you read. Talk to people about your sibling, look at photos and messages you do have, and unabashedly write yourself notes in the moments you remember. But above all, whether you remember every day or not, you lived them and they’re still yours.

I became her unofficial biographer

I find myself searching for every photo, post, and story of my sister that I can find. Like I’m researching a biography I won’t actually write.

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.