How To Write Your Sister's Obituary, And Other Things I Wish I Didn't Know.

I was mid-winter night's dream when the phone rang. 

"Are you sitting down?" he asked.  "Should I do that?"  I stalled.  Nothing good comes next.

My mother had found her just before; had entered her room with the newly folded laundry.  She glanced over, and something had come over, as it often does with mothers.

My sister was in the bed.  She was laying on her side, with the blanket to her chin.  She was 39 years old, turning 40 in two weeks.  She had brown hair that was permed once in high school. It had been colored a million different ways a million different times, and her brown eyes had broken as many hearts.   Her headphones lay in her ears-she loved music.  Years ago, when our parents were out of town she painted her favorite lyrics on the walls. I used to lay on her bed and memorize the words, ponder which songs they belonged to.  "Voices, a thousand thousand voices"  "How quick the sun can drop away."  Black.  Patience.  Mother.  See you on the other side.  Her eyes were closed.  She was too still.  She was gone.

The next day we sat around and stared at each other.  Stared down the hall to her room.  Stared at her purse on the chair.  I said I would do it because I wanted to, because I owed her, because she would have done the same for me. There would be dates to double check-middle names and maiden names and nicknames, but there was probably a template somewhere.  I could probably finish in an hour or two, because probably, comparatively, how difficult could it be?

It was day three when I picked up the computer. Our youngest two played at my feet, loudly oblivious to the gravity of my task.  I needed distraction.  I needed silence.  I needed thirty more years.

The words were cement to my fingers.  My sister died on December 10th.  Peacefully?  Tragically?  Sans all logic and notice and consent?  Sentence two.  What does "nee" mean?  Google. Accent above  'e'.  Pause to cry.  Hard.  You're scaring your children, now they're crying.  Pause to hug them.  Harder.  Cartoons.  Sit down.  Type.  What should be said about her in approximately five sentences or less?  One's entire life in a paragraph or less?  What would you want said about you in five sentences or less?  This is absurd.  Why are you doing this?  How are you doing this?   Pause to vomit.  Yes, you are physically ill.  Yes, this might be impossible.

Except it wasn't. Somehow, I returned to the couch and sobbed through ten more sentences.  I told people that my sister was creative and passionate and generous.  I spoke of her two dogs, how she loved writing, Pearl Jam, and Dr. Pepper.  I listed her relatives, most older and one much younger, who have gone before her and I noted the specifics of her memorial service.  I pressed "share" and somehow, I'm still breathing.  And grocery shopping and grading lab reports and ordering takeout and even laughing, not three months later.

I think it's because I've learned that nothing is impossible.  I don't mean that in the motivational way you'd print and hang in an office.  I mean it the hard way.  The gun-to-your-head, no other option way. I mean it in the way life can force you to do the stuff of nightmares.

Like cancer, and car accidents, and heart attacks at 39.  Like deep ends and turned heads and seconds too late.  Like falls, and fatal strains, and unforeseen.  Like addiction, and depression, and stillbirth.

It was six years ago. It was a twelve minute drive to a hospital. It was the hitch in the doctor's voice, the way he avoided my gaze.  It was a still ultrasound, too still.  It was thirteen hours later, I can't do this I can't do this.  It was the way they all cried, the way my heart kept moving when it couldn't have, shouldn't have.  It was the brown, wavy hair I' d never braid, and the blue eyes that wouldn't open.  It was her weight in my arms, on my chest, through my hands.  It was my daughter.  She was my daughter.  She was gone.  It was six years ago.  It's right now. 

In every moment that's beautiful and hard and profound, and in all the in between. Together, these two loves of my life, these two caverns of my heart; expansive and sought and carried.  Ever free and ever held.  Every day, their voices when I speak; their eyes in mine, walking the impossible.













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