Sarah

What have six months done to me?

I write this on the six-month milestone of my sister’s last night on this earth. I can’t help but feel a heavy mix of emotions as I consider the weight of my responsibility to live life well, because I currently still can. Six months ago she had a wonderful night, but she did not know it was the last one. Six months ago she went to bed, mind full of the things she would do the next day. Six months ago she was the baby sister I could hug and call and share memes with.

Six months ago I wasn’t the person I am now, either.

I was more type A. I was just coming around the corner of what I thought was a major breakthrough in openly telling the people in my life what they meant to me. I was stressed and letting work take more than its fair share of my time. But I was also looking forward to August and a new chapter; I would be back in my home country, closer to friends and family. It was going to be a great upcoming year.

And then the world fell apart underneath me. I’ve somehow stumbled forward for six months. I’ve sort of recovered a large part of the things that used to define the “me” I recognize, but she is not all back. I don’t think she ever will be. I’ve lost my little sister. And I’ve lost the big sister I was, too. I’ve lost the only shape of my family I recognize.

I no longer know how to answer simple questions. How many people are in my family? Do I have any siblings? What tense do I use when I talk about her now? It tears my heart each time.

The answers make people uncomfortable:

There are three living people in my family, but there were and should be four.

I have a sibling, and she is dead.

My sister is many things to me, but grammatically speaking, I should talk about how she was because there is no more is-ing possible from her.

In six months, I’ve made remarkable progress toward being “okay,” whatever that means. In six months, though, I’ve often found myself back in a profound pit of despair. Never quite as deep as the first weeks, but sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. People tell me the next six months will also be challenging in new ways. I am just so tired. I don’t know if I have it in me to face more challenges. But I have to have it in me to keep living each day to the best of my ability, because I can, and she can’t.

Needing to know other people are also struggling

It’s taken me a while to come to terms with this simple truth: I am comforted when other people share with me that they, too, are still struggling with my sister’s death.

I used to think it was selfish of me to want other people to be hurting. I realize now that I wasn’t looking at things fairly to myself. I don’t want others to hurt, just as I don’t want my sister to be dead. But both are true. And as I walk through this often isolating experience, the bond of grief, no matter how tragic, is an important reminder that I am not always alone.

Her partner, despite having a new girlfriend only a few months later, still cries at home alone and holds her ashes.

Her work bestie sometimes stays in the car a few more minutes when a song comes on that reminds her of my sister, and sometimes she cries.

Her childhood best friend still struggles with finding meaning in the aftermath of her untimely death.

Many of her coworkers still talk about her regularly, and sometimes they send me a photo of special things, like the t-shirts they made in her honor.

Her cat still looks for her in the house and sleeps on the spot where she died.

These are only the examples I know of, because people have told me their stories, shared their pain. And every time, I have been so, so thankful to know. Because it is easy to convince myself that I alone am carrying the torch of her memory while everyone else is okay. But that’s not true.

My sister was loved by many people. And I may walk closer to the most intense part of the pain, but I am not alone. She did not disappear from this earth without notice. She has not been forgotten. Her name still spills from friends’ mouths and memories of her laughter and face linger.

I would be far less okay if people did not decide to tell me when they think of her, when they hurt, when they privately or publicly continue to mourn. I don’t know if every grieving sibling wants this outreach, but I know it’s been key to my ability to carry myself forward.

Today I’m not okay

I have an important language assessment at work today. I am ready for it, I know the material, I should do well. Except I am sitting in my apartment sobbing as I try to study, because I know the topic of family is going to come up, and innocuous questions like “how many people in your family?” are going to kill me.

I’m also sobbing in my apartment because a few days ago it felt like a lot of major pieces of life were slowly shifting into a good place, and now several of them no longer exist.

I was entirely incorrect about the crush I had before, and the sting of rejection weighs heavy on me now. I was wrong again, and the repeating pattern is somehow more painful this time than the last five.

A different friendship I thought I would have indefinitely imploded in a small, quiet, but irreparable way.

The holidays are creeping closer, and without warning, I started pre-mourning the fact that my sister would not be sending me a hailstorm of gifs on my birthday in December. I then started worrying about Christmas and her birthday and all of the other first things coming down the path, still.

I should be studying for this assessment, but I can’t.

I have decided that today I’m going to have to accept that I am not okay. As trite as it sounds, I have to also convince myself that it’s okay to not be okay. Just because in some ways I now live normally doesn’t mean I am not still grappling with immense pain and loss. I will probably show up to this assessment with red eyes and lacking my trademark smile, and this is my prerogative. No one can tell me otherwise.

And when I’m ready, I’ll put the smile back on, and give it another shot.

Five months

It’s been five months since my sister existed in the only way I have ever known her. Five months since a phone call shattered the reality I used to live in and drew a line down the middle of Who I Was and Who I Would Become. Five months since I had the luxury of taking people, experiences, or time for granted.

I remember in the earliest days of the grief, I desperately wanted people further along in the journey to tell me when it would be okay. I wanted to understand what was to come and prepare myself for it. So let me offer what I can to anyone who has found themselves here because they’re now facing those first days and weeks.

It doesn’t necessarily get better, but you will change.

You will find some good metaphors⁠—I personally found the “ball in a box” one useful⁠. You will read way more uplifting (and depressing) quotes on photo backgrounds that all seem to speak to something you never had experienced before. You will probably take stock of who and what you have in your life, finding that your preferences dramatically change. You will cry. You will get angry. You will sometimes wonder if there is any future for you besides the hollow, bottomed-out place you’re in.

And then one day you’ll realize you made it to the surface for air. It might only be for a second, but you will. Hopefully you’ll find it becomes easier to get back to that air, and maybe you won’t even think about it as an active effort anymore. But you’re still in the dark, deep, cold water. You’ll find yourself breaking down in class in front of people you met mere weeks before. Or you’ll fall apart doing a mundane thing in public, because something reminded you of them. There will be days you fantasize about just not trying to get back to the surface and seeing what happens when you reach the bottom.

You will have to figure out whether you’re the type of person with the instinct toward life or away from it.

Five months ago I couldn’t imagine feeling happy at all, let alone consider the possibility of starting and succeeding at new job training or having an intense crush on someone, but all of these things are now true. My values have shifted in ways both big and small, and the pace at which I want to live my life has, too. But everything I see in myself is tied to the fact that I want to live. I don’t want to just breathe, but I want to be alive and present in my own life. I have not embraced a full YOLO lifestyle⁠—I still grapple with insecurity and doubt and aversion to many risks⁠—but the most brutal reminder of how fragile life is has also freed me from some of the ways I held myself back before.

I don’t have all the answers. As holidays, her birthday, and then the first anniversary of her death loom on the horizon, I anticipate there being days that I wish to return to the bottom and huddle there. But now I know exactly how good it can feel up here on the surface, and I will make it back up for air.

Leaving my sister’s house for the likely last time

I have been back and forth to this house she called home a handful of times since my sister’s death. I had never been to this house while she was alive⁠—she and her partner moved in while I was working abroad, and when I came home, we all went to our parents’ house for holidays.

I have only known this house as I walked among the things that constituted the life she built. I only projected my thoughts onto the physical realities I saw in throughout the rooms. I could only take in the circumstantial remnants of what happened that morning. I was unable to fully imagine her when she truly occupied this space.

I have sat where she sat, eaten where she ate, handled objects she held, and lived in what is left in her wake. This trip I got to unbox her lovingly purchased Halloween decorations and help deck out the house for her favorite holiday. This house has allowed me to commune with my sister through her physical world, when I no longer can have her presence.

This time I came back to a house that, while still filled with reminders of her, has far less of her things than it did last time. It’s like her presence through her possessions is waning. I know her partner will get rid of more of her things in the coming months… the man was content to have way too many of her favorite gnome decorations in the house when he saw the happiness it brought her. Without her, they’re just painful clutter.

And here I sit, hours before I fly away from this town again, and without a next trip on the horizon. I do not know if I will ever be back here. That is a painful sentence to write, because it was not that long ago I was figuring out the optimal way to get here from my next work assignment, because I was anticipating a 2024 wedding I would absolutely need to travel for.

When I leave this town, I don’t want it to be hard, but I can’t imagine it will be easy. It feels like another reminder that at some point, whether know it or not, we do the last of anything⁠—someday will be the last day we hug someone or speak to someone or see some place. I never appreciated that fully until I lost my sister. It’s hard to stop thinking about it now.