Tag: introspection

The last thing I ever said to my sister

On the spectrum of regrets the other bereaved people have, it certainly could be worse, but that does little to comfort me as I ruminate.

The last time I messaged her was May 6. Two weeks before she died. To be honest, that exchange also barely counts. The real last time was nearly a month before that. I cannot express to you how upset this truth makes me as I write it now in black and white on my screen.

It wasn’t uncommon for there to be weeks between messages. That hasn’t comforted me at all. In fact, it’s compounded the guilt. The time stamps are evidence of all the opportunities I didn’t take. The wrong choices I made, based on assumptions about a future that will never exist.

The last thing she heard from me, though, was a few days after our last text exchange. When she finally got around to opening this silly card I sent her, using an online service.

Inside was a short message:

Seeester,

I didn’t want to only have your address for the purpose of my background check, so I decided to also send you this ridiculous card.

LIFE IS WEIRD, BUT SO ARE WE. I hope you’re having a good day!

❤ Sarah

I have this card, now. It was open on the counter when I got to her home after traveling nearly 5,000 miles home. She never told me she had opened it, but I was told she had been very excited about it when it came. I hope that’s true. I wish I had written so much more in that stupid card. Is a heart emoji the same as telling someone you love them? Was a seven-word wish for a good day enough to tell her I thought about her often and wished her happiness?

The double gut punch of this all is that on May 19, the eve of my life irreparably breaking, I felt very, very content. A very important coworker and mentor was leaving, and I had written him a short letter thanking him and specifically explaining how he had impacted me. I was on good terms with a lot of people in the place I lived and worked, the place I would leave in a few short months. I distinctly remember thinking how wonderful it was to have no regrets about not saying something to someone, how pleased I was to have earnestly and generously verbalized all the things I would normally have just quietly thought before people left.

I had no idea that less than 12 hours later, I would be confronted with the unavoidable truth that I had not been as demonstrative with my sister. There had never appeared to be some transition that triggered a need to do so, I guess. As I sit here now, I think of all the hypothetical milestones I would have poured my heart out to her⁠—a promotion, her engagement to her wonderful partner, their wedding, them buying a house. I bought into the fallacy of there being a next time, and I robbed my sister of getting to know what I thought of her, truly.

So I’ll write it now, 84 days too late.

Sister, I spoke of you often. I still try to, but the weight of what I’m trying to say right now comes from you knowing that before you were gone, I did. In a sea of people who all do the same job as me, it was refreshing to brag about you being a culinary school-trained chef. People always thought it was cool. I’m proud of you for challenging path you took and the way you excelled in every kitchen you entered. People respected you, your work ethic, and your abilities. (For the record, I also always mentioned your insane black cat, your partner, the town where you lived, your love of peanut butter cups.)

Home would never quite be home without you there. It’s why I always coordinated my trips home with you. We were a set, a pair, and I needed that precious time to overlap with you as much as possible. As I write this now, I have to grapple with the fact that home may never quite be home ever again. Thank you for all these years of bending your holiday schedule around my travel.

For our whole lives, I’ve always considered you the pretty one, and it flattered me that you liked my style. I cherished all our sister shopping dates and when you would come to me to ask for fashion advice or a second set of eyes on an outfit⁠, especially in more recent times when that required you to message me. I would trade a whole hell of a lot for one more afternoon in the mall with you.

I am so happy you found love. I think one of the reasons I didn’t feel like we needed to talk as frequently was because I knew without any shadow of a doubt you had all the love, support, and affection you would need in your home, with your partner. You and he took care of each other in an effortlessly complementary way.

I took for granted that mom would tell me tidbits about your life, and so the time stretched long sometimes. I’m sorry. I wish I could have heard more of what I have in the past 84 days from you instead of through your friends. Your friends are lovely, by the way. I wish I could have met them with you at your favorite restaurant as a group, instead of somberly under the spectre of your loss and the vacuum you’ve left behind.

I’m proud of you. You found a way all your own and built a happy life. I wish you could have had another 60 years of time, because based on what I’ve learned since your death, you created positive ripples around you wherever you went. You left people’s lives changed for the better. I hope you knew you were a shining light for people. Somehow, I don’t think you did.

I love you.

I chose not to view my sister’s body

Death rituals are a way to honor those we lost, but they are also for the living. My sister would have done the same as I did, and I am comfortable knowing that.

We didn’t have a “proper” service for my sister. She didn’t particularly like large to-dos, and none of us were in a position to put on anything formal. Instead, it was just the family (her partner, his immediate family, our parents, and me) and a small subset of her closest friends⁠, “her people.”

I had told our parents ahead of time that I would not be looking at her. Years ago, at a funeral for one of our grandparents, she and I had talked about how creepy we personally found the whole business of viewings at funerals. I clung to that conversation as confirmation that she would have completely understood my decision. I allowed myself to not view her, dressed in the clothes her partner and I had picked out together after standing in her closet the day before, crying and holding each other.

I couldn’t look, because to look would have replaced the last time I had seen her⁠—months before when I was home for Christmas and had hugged her goodbye⁠—with this moment, and I couldn’t bear to do that.

I also understood that her partner needed to see her, because his last memory was of her body on the floor where he had attempted CPR. Where paramedics had also failed to bring her back. Where she had been declared dead. Where blood of as-of-yet still unexplained origin stained the carpet around her. He needed to see a more peaceful, final vision of the woman he was supposed to spend his life with.

I likewise knew why my parents wanted to see her. If they hadn’t, there would have been a part of them that doubted this was real at all. They needed to behold her final sleep so they could wrap their minds about this out-of-sequence event in life. They needed to say goodbye to their baby, who should have outlived them by decades.

The private viewing room was small, and I had to stand in a corner near the door not to look at her when the four of us⁠—parents, her partner, and I⁠—entered. I ended up standing with my back partially toward her to avoid looking inadvertantly.

Hearing their involuntary reactions when they first saw her was hard. Nothing prepares you for the sound of hearing your parents realize their worst fear came true. My dad’s quiet, simple, “I’m going to miss you so much” as he barely contained his sobs will be etched into my memory forever. It’s also heartbreaking hearing your sister’s partner apologize to her lifeless form despite there being absolutely nothing he could have changed. None of us knew what to do, and none of us wanted to leave. Because after we said goodbye, she would be cremated. Because this special collection of atoms that made up the woman we loved would never again exist, not like this.

As I went to cross the threshold of the door and leave, I turned and looked not at her but at the casket where she was. I wiggled my hands in the stupid way we had taken to waving goodbye for years and said my last farewell, using the nickname we used for each other. And my heart broke again as for the first time, I got no echo in response.

What it meant to lose my sibling

The meaning of this loss changes⁠—daily. I lost my oldest friendship, my closest confidant, and the only person with whom there were no misunderstandings about where I came from and how I became who I was.

In the time that has passed since I lost my sister, I have repeatedly been confronted with the painful truth that many people do not understand what it means to lose a sibling, especially in young adulthood.

You can find some limited articles online about how siblings are considered “disenfranchised grievers,” and how their grief if often overshadowed by parents, partners, or children. There are some pieces that try to give an explanation of what losing a sibling is like, but I found many of them were about children losing child siblings or about older adults losing their older sibling. As I sat in my early 30s having lost my sibling in her 20s, none of it quite rang true. So let me tell you what was true for me and my sibling loss.

I lost a fundamental part of my past, present, and future.

You siblings ⁠— for better or worse ⁠— are often the only people who grew up the way you did. With the same people, in the same places, sharing the same shorthand understanding of the daily growth of the you that exists now. Your siblings are a unique promise of someone who knows your past, walks with you in your present, and is a structural piece of what should be your future. I had always assumed she would be with me through it all.

To lose that is to lose a part of yourself. The only other person who had some of the same memories as you. The only other person who could understand what you were getting at in just a couple words, because you shared the same lived experiences over a lifetime. I lost a critical presence I counted on for important life milestones ⁠— my hypothetical wedding someday, a major career achievement, the eventual loss of our parents, just to name a few. I lost the sense of security I had in my own life and future.

I had to realize that my incorrect judgments of where to devote my time had cost me the only time I would ever have with her.

We did not speak as much as I now wish we did. Weeks would often elapse between contact. I hadn’t been able to see or hug her since four and a half months before she died. At that time, knowing only what I knew then, this was natural. We were building our careers, our lives, our homes. She was happy, loved, and finding success. I was thousands of miles away, busy but achieving career goals and looking forward to being much closer to home in just a few months.

We were supposed to have so much more time.

Instead, in the aftermath of her loss, I beat myself up over all the meaningless ways I spent my time instead of reaching out. (Frankly, I’m still working on letting go of the regret and the guilt and the anger.) I wish I could retroactively unwaste the hours I worked too long or the times I went out to a mediocre meal with people I didn’t really enjoy because “you never know if it might turn out to be a good time” or the times I opted to go vacation somewhere else that wasn’t home. I would take all of those hours and offer them to her, instead.

It has fundamentally changed the way I want to spend the time I now have. My social circle has grown smaller, but the relationships I maintain are far more profound. I am very judicious

I was forced to become somebody else, and I don’t know her yet.

I’m still discovering all the insidious ways this is true. I have been thrust into “only child”hood unwillingly, but must also carry the flame of my sister, because she is dead, not erased.

How do you explain that to someone who innocently asks, “Do you have any siblings?” In my case, it turns out to tell the poor taxi driver you “had” a sister and then promptly start crying when he catches the past tense and gently asks what you mean. But I know there will be many more times in my years ahead that I will have to either say, “No, it’s just me” or, if that hurts too much, obliquely say, “I have a younger sister,” and hope we can leave it at that. Either way, I will end up lying in order to spare someone else the discomfort.

Who do I have to be now that all of our parents’ hopes and dreams are pinned squarely to me? And how do I have to reframe my entire career trajectory now that my sister, the one who stayed closer to home and was there for our parents while I was far, far away, is gone? As I write this today, I don’t know if her death also means I will have to change my career. The entire plan of my life hangs in a hazy state of confusion, now.

I lost all desire to pursue many of my hobbies, and in most cases, that desire hasn’t come back. My drive at work is greatly diminished. Many of the ways people would describe who I was in the Before are no longer true in the After. It is like I don’t even know myself anymore. And that’s terrifying.

I lost my ability to trust the future.

I think this is the impact that will plague me the longest. If one day a healthy 20-something can go to bed and never wake up again, how can I trust anything in this life? How can I make plans for the future? Why do I spend as much time as I do at work? How do I motivate myself to do mundane things that feel pointless if I my time left is numbered in hours instead of decades?

I can also feel the way this is seeping into my thought processes. I would love to find a life partner to share the time I have with. But what if I only have a few years left and I pick wrong? I want to pursue writing as a side profession, but I have no intentions of leaving my main job. What if I squander the only time I might have? My job takes me to many places far from home. While I still love that, I now also feel a gnawing fear of all the things I’m giving up with friends and family by being so far away. Is my career worth the cost?

I lost my oldest friendship, my closest confidant, and the only person with whom there were no misunderstandings about where I came from and how I became who I was. And that chasm that has now opened up in the core of who I am is with me for the rest of my life.