Grief – Unmoored Sister

I wish you could have met her

Whenever I try to explain my sister to anyone, I inevitably tell them I wish they could have met her. It’s a sentence steeped in meaning, as everything feels like it is lately.

I wish you could have met her… because that would mean she is still alive. And no matter how much time I put between me and the transition from Before to After, I cannot let go of the part of me that wants to inhabit a magical place where my bargaining and pleading will change the simple biological fact that her body stopped, her self-driven narrative ended.

I wish you could have met her… because I do a mediocre job capturing her with my words. People are such complex creatures, aren’t we? Layers upon layers of context and history and whim and mystery. Everything I can think to say falls flat. A single sentence needs another seventy just to try to give it the shape it deserves.

I wish you could have met her… because the fact that you can’t means I am stepping even further into the rest of my future as the sibling left behind. You’re in my life and she isn’t. It’s a bittersweet tradeoff to welcome new people into my life knowing that the list is an involuntary revolving door. There’s not just gain, there’s loss.

I wish you could have met her… because now it’s up to your conjecture, based on imperfect information, you understanding of me and the shape I’ve had to become healing over the gaping emptiness her death left inside me. I think it would be easier to understand me as I am now if you knew her as she was.

Painful digital reminders

“…the spans of time between the timestamps left me breathless with painful regret.”

There are all kinds of small, digital artifacts that exacerbated the pain in those first days. They still gnaw at me in the weeks and months after. It’s been 73 days, and while I have let go of some of my digital compulsions from early on, it’s still painful.

The two gray check marks on the family WhatsApp chat that would never turn blue, because they were sent after she died. (We recreated a new chat without her, without discussing it, because we all saw the same thing.)

The sent-but-not-delivered check mark in a circle on Messenger, for messages I regretted sending as soon as I did. (I couldn’t stop myself.)

Her username in Discord groups, forever offline. (It was set at just “away” and her partner had to go onto her computer and put her offline, because it was distressing her friends.)

Her number in my contacts, under the nickname we used for each other for at least ten years. Someday another person will have that number. I try not to think about how my soul would entirely leave my body if, by some cosmic horror of an error, the new owner of the phone called me. (I would fall apart, no matter where I was.)

The last silly Instagram DM I’d sent her, a video of something that would’ve made her smile. (I wish I’d sent so many more.)

Internet and digital technology has brought this incredible ability to be connected to people no matter the distance, but it also archives our every message, post, and choice. I cherish the message history I do have, but the spans of time between the timestamps left me breathless with painful regret.

I’m angry with my past self for not backing up old text message threads when I upgraded phones.

I judge every word in every message now ⁠— Why didn’t I say more? Why didn’t I reach out daily? Why didn’t I see what I see now and take advantage of what I had when I could?

And so I’ve had to archive these things, at least for now. I went to her pages so many times that the apps and website all recommended her first. I broke 41 days in and sent a message to her on Messenger, which pulled her profile picture to the top of the pile. I had to gently put them on the digital shelf, so I could interact with my digital world on my own terms. And I hate that I had to.

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.

The unhelpful things people said that stuck with me

I have some strong feelings about what to not say to someone going through grief.

I know many are anxious to understand what to say or what not to say to someone who is grieving. You can find a lot of articles with advice of varying degrees of helpful. I can only tell you which of the painfully inappropriate and tone deaf things that I remember word for word. Consider these exemplars of what not to say to anyone grieving, and especially to someone navigating the painful and often overlooked world of sibling loss.

“Was she your only sibling?” / “Were you close?” I’m sure it was meant to understand the gravity of my loss, but reminding me in that moment that I was now alone in a profound way was not helpful. It didn’t matter if I had one or five sisters, or whether we spoke daily or had been estranged⁠ — I was clearly in pain.
“I understand how you feel, because I was very sad when my 18-year-old son left home three weeks earlier than planned.” Or any variation of anything that is clearly nowhere near the same magnitude. I have tried to convince myself this was the most painful thing this person had ever felt, and it was a genuine attempt to relate, but even writing it now, I’m still angry.
“How are your parents holding up?” The sequencing matters on this one, but I feel it was often a way for the asker to avoid focusing on me because they were uncomfortable, but it made me feel completely erased and unseen. (In a larger conversation that did not completely overlook me and my pain, this could be okay, to be clear.)
“Oh, are you still sad?” Asked on the day of the one-month milestone since my life transitioned from the Before Times to the After Times. Yes, I’m still very much sad.
“She’s in a better place now.” / “Her purpose here was finished.” How dare anyone try to tell me my sister is better off anywhere than in the loving home she built with her partner enjoying music, food, friends, and life? Sometimes these sentiments were tinged with a religious connotation that also does not align with my understanding of life and the universe, which made it that much harder to accept.
“How are you?” This is such a loaded question. I would have preferred a simple, “It’s good to see you.” It would have even been easier to receive, “What’s on the agenda today?” or honestly anything that didn’t come accompanied with that telltale look of pity. To be clear, from close friends or even well intentioned folks in a private setting, this wasn’t so bad. But asking at a table full of people as I sit down to participate in a meeting is not kind.

The pain of someone else’s birthday song

Eleven days after my sister’s death, sitting in a restaurant and hearing happy birthday was too much.

We went to Red Robin a few after we said our goodbyes at the funeral home. It was the four of us ⁠— our parents, my sister’s partner, and me. It was the first time we had gone out anywhere to eat or do much of anything. We watched a Memorial Day jet flyover in her honor and then went to eat. Eleven days in the After.

We prioritized ordering her favorite dishes ⁠— a pre-meal Oreo Cookie Magic Milkshake, some Clucks & Fries, a Whiskey River BBQ Chicken Wrap. These had been staples since middle school. We sat around the table doing our best to hold it together and look like a normal family out to lunch, but I know we were all lost in memories.

Memories of past meals at this and other Red Robins. Meals attached to high school sports and family dinners and then later to dates and fun life events. We were doing okay, until behind us the staff began a rousing round of the restaurant’s birthday song, wishing someone a happy 29th birthday.

29.

An age my sister would never get to be. Her time ended 7 months too early for that. An innocuous number that brought the world crashing down around us. We shrunk into our booth and avoided eye contact until we each had managed to bury back within ourselves the renewed grief.

I don’t have a witty end to this story, nor do I have some insightful way to turn it into something meaningful. Sometimes it just sucks to sit in the middle of a restaurant trying to survive when someone else’s celebration reminds you of all that you’ve lost.