Tag: introspection

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.

Grief is sometimes someone irrationally lashing out

Almost none of us are “good” at grief, and we have to be prepared to ride out not only our own highs and lows, but those of the people around us.

I mentioned previously that our mom had printed and framed 100 photos of my sister for her celebration of life. On the day our parents were departing my sister’s town, mom dropped the news on both me and my sister’s partner that she had done this, in part, with the intention of handing off dozens of them to both him and I. This wasn’t a conversation or discussion⁠—this was an implied imperative. Mom had dad bring in the boxes of photos and asked my sister’s partner if he wanted to look through the photos and choose some. He politely but firmly replied he didn’t need any and had all the photos he wanted already.

Mom got pissed. She thinks I didn’t see her angry crying as she stormed out into the garage to busy herself with helping dad load up the truck, but she was upset. She wouldn’t speak to anyone for a while. The muttered phrase about “erasing my daughter” came up again.

And the point of this anecdote isn’t to litigate the series of communication failures or the interpersonal issues⁠—though I could write much on that. Instead, I am here to say for you as much as for me that when there is an outburst, whether it is your own or someone else, it’s probably not about the thing happening in that moment. And if you have it in you to take that moment to pause and be inquisitive rather than acting, it will go a long way toward diffusing the situation.

I know mom wants to grieve by surrounding herself with my sister. She wants to hoard everything my sister touched or had. She may slowly turn our family home into a museum or shrine of my sister. I also know mom expects others to think and act in a way approximating her own thoughts and actions. So when my sister’s partner did not want those photos, she took it as a rejection of my sister herself. She saw it as a total erasure of my sister, especially on the heels of the clothing donation we had made the day before. Mom doesn’t see just how much of my sister remains in that house, despite the major exodus of things. Because the part of my sister that lives in that house is the adult woman who made a home and a life with her partner, separate from our parents. And that part is less obvious to mom than the part she raised. My mom isn’t wrong for wanting him to want the photos, but it wasn’t fair for her to project meaning onto the refusal, either.

I also know my sister’s partner wants to grieve by speaking into existence the idea that he is “farther along in his grief than everyone else.” He finds comfort in distraction and distance from the pain, though he also keeps many prominent reminders of my sister throughout every room of the house. He takes care of my sister’s cat, an animal that is not the kindest or the best behaved. He parks every day next to my sister’s car, still on the driveway. He indulges in their shared hobbies with her things around him, now unused. He failed to see that my mom needed the validation of him wanting those photos to know that he still very much loved and missed my sister. Though he wants to believe he’s way ahead of the rest of us in processing the loss, he’s still very focused on protecting his own mental wellbeing, and he knew having more photos of her physically around would not be healing. He isn’t wrong for this in any way.

I avoided inserting myself in the situation. I was torn, because I obviously care about my mother, but she didn’t want to speak, and she doesn’t have any interest in having emotional conversations. I also feel an allegiance to supporting my sister’s partner, because I know it would break my sister’s heart if the winds shifted in a way that left it as him vs. the three of us. My sister loved him enough to nearly get to make him my brother-in-law, and so he is definitively family, too. I’m also just tired of constantly feeling like I need to resolve conflict and preempt it when possible. This doesn’t leave time for me to focus on my own grief.

And maybe that’s a lesson I need to learn. I can’t mitigate every moment of interpersonal friction, and it’s okay to step back and focus on myself. Or maybe there isn’t a lesson at all, and the entire moral of the story is death sucks, grief hurts, and there’s no amount of fixing that will fill the hole. 

Scattering some of my sister in the sea

I didn’t know what to expect when we scattered some of her ashes, and I doubt I could have prepared myself anyway.

When my sister was cremated, her ashes got divided in four: two small urns, that reside with our parents and her partner, and two small “scattering tubes,” which we planned to take to her two favorite places, in two separate states, one after each celebration of life we would hold. 

Three days after the first celebration, we piled into a car together and made the three-hour road trip. We went to the coastal town she lived for two and a half years while she went to culinary school and did her externship. The oceanside place where she truly blossomed into an adult, shined in her chosen career path, and spent time at her favorite place⁠—the seaside. I had only been there once, for her graduation in 2014. This would be just one of many, many people, places, and things I didn’t truly know because I had built myself a far-flung life abroad.

We stopped at her all-time favorite restaurant, a sushi joint. We made sure to enjoy her favorite roll. I brought the ashes in their tube in my bag. I couldn’t leave her in the car. When I picked up the tube, I was surprised by the heft of the ashes that represented a quarter of her physical body. I had a backpack purse, so I decided I was giving her a piggy back ride that day. I hadn’t given her a piggy back ride since we were children.

We then went to the first of her two favorite parts of the coastline. I had come here with her and our parents when she graduated. The four of us walked the length of the beach. Her partner told some stories about the many trips the two of them had taken out here. We eventually picked a place where we would spread half the ashes. Until this point, I had felt heavy but wasn’t specifically sad. But the moment the tube was open and I watched them hit the water and quickly fade into nothingness in sea, I started sobbing. It was too perfect of a visual metaphor⁠—there and then suddenly gone. We all stood there for a while in silence, regarding the waves and the endless horizon. A heavy fog rolled in as we made our way back to the car.

The four of us then drove a couple miles up the coastline to my sister’s all-time favorite place, a rocky state park area that had a lot of wildlife, too. I had never been there, and that realization struck me hard. As I have done many, many times since her death, I fantasized about standing there with her, letting her show me this beautiful place, instead of being there for the first time to let a literal part of her go. We sat at a lookout for a while. Because I had looked through many of her photos, including photos from this period of her life, I recognized these rocky formations, despite never having been there myself. I knew I stood where she had once stood, because the angles lined up. Her partner found the perfect moment to spread the rest of the ashes when no one else was around. I did not cry this time. Once again, fog began to roll in after we spread her ashes. This isn’t uncommon on the coast, but I think we all also wanted to find meaning in it. Grief does that. We spent as long as we could justify at that location, too, before we had to start the three-hour trip back. 

I had hoped to feel some greater sense of peace or finality after this step. I don’t. I still feel sad, unsettled. But I do feel like I now have two concrete places to go be, every chance I get to visit our home state, and sit with my sister. So that’s something, right?

Celebrating life, dividing objects, and spreading ashes

Catching up on many milestones that have passed in the last few weeks.

A lot has happened since I last posted. I haven’t felt like I’ve had time to breathe for a while now, let alone write. If you are in a position to better control your schedule, I don’t recommend cramming so much activity into your life like I had to.

  • On August 18, I moved internationally, back to the United States for now.
  • On August 27, we held my sister’s first celebration of life in the town where she had been living.
  • On August 28, we began the challenging task of sorting through my sister’s worldly possessions and deciding who would keep what, and what we would donate or get rid of.
  • On August 30, we drove to her two favorite places along our state’s coast and spread some of her ashes.
  • On August 31, we donated approximately 80% of her wardrobe to a local charity she would have been happy to see her things go to.
  • On September 4, I moved into a new apartment across the country.
  • On September 5, I began intensive training for my job.

I need and want to reflect on many of these milestones, so in the next few posts, I’ll do just that. But let me say I am in a weird place where I am relaxed but emotionally saturated. Rested but tired. Okay and also barely holding it together.

Spreading her ashes was intensely emotional, in a way I didn’t expect. Every step of the way, if there was a way for their to be interpersonal friction between the four of us⁠—my sister’s partner, my parents, and I⁠—there was. Donating her things felt like a major achievement and a sucker punch to the gut at the same time.

Most importantly, I’ve had to reckon with the fact that the first major life change for me has happened, and my sister wasn’t witness to it. I didn’t get to visit her when I briefly went home. I didn’t get to send her a video of my new apartment. I didn’t get to delight her by telling her I was going to give dating a try again in this new city. I can’t try any longer to convince her to come visit me in the places I am.

I have officially moved forward, and my sister has not, can not, and never will. Time stands still for her story, and I wish mine could, too, if only for a moment.

That simple fact is enough to leave me crying, something I haven’t had time or privacy to do in weeks. Clearly, my heart remains heavy, despite the months that have passed.

Now there’s no one that understands

Today I had a (thankfully private) meltdown over something that wasn’t worthy of that level of drama, but it reminded me that the person I would have turned to⁠—my sister⁠—is gone.

My sister’s celebration of life is in 11 days.

Our mom has, in part, kept herself occupied by thinking through the minutiae of the casual outdoor event. I know she needs to do this to keep herself sane. I know this stresses out my sister’s partner, who is focused on keeping himself afloat. I find myself playing this weird intermediary role to try to keep the peace, but it tears me up inside. Because for our entire lives, if something sparked outrage or frustration within the family, my sister and I would turn to one another. Originally in person, in conspiratorial conversation later, and then once we got older, via messages.

Today I needed her, and she wasn’t there. Because now she is dead. And I am alone.

I’m not alone-alone. I have friends. Our parents. My sister’s partner and I talk frequently. But I am alone in the way that counted, in the way I needed to not be alone. When I needed the only person in this world who could have understood why I got so frustrated as I helped our mom put together a printed handout for the celebration. When I needed my little sister who would validate my frustration, share a recent story of her own, and make it all okay.

I couldn’t distract myself with the task, either, because the task had me staring at photos of her. Her full legal name. The two dates with the hyphen between, focusing so much on the day she first lived and the day she died, eliding all that came between. A thank you from the family, just the four of us where there should have been five. (Her partner is family until he decides otherwise.)

My sobs were for the fact that no matter how many stories I tell, no one will ever have grown up with me. This magical, unspoken intuition born from a shared childhood, shared home, shared parents was ripped from me, and all I have left is the memory of how wonderful it was to have. I did not recognize how great sisterhood was until I lost it. I will spend the rest of my life confronting situations that stab my heart as I realize they would have been better or easier with her.

She would get it, she would completely understand me and this immense challenge, if only she were here for me to talk to.