Warning, this is long and mainly I just really needed to get this out.
Tomorrow the mystery will be solved. A year ago my sister died at the age of 32 from an illness that slowly destroyed her body for two years. From the first day she was admitted into the hospital my family was inundated with theories and never a straight answer as to what she had. My father spent many a night looking up these rare illnesses that he was told she could have had on the internet, hoping for a better understanding, and at best looking for hope. The autopsy is now complete and tomorrow I will know what took her.
I never really knew my sister, she was my fathers’ daughter from his first marriage and she lived with her mother. We would see each other for a few weeks each summer and the occasional Christmas; this was the norm until her mother moved with her and our brother to what seemed like a million miles away. I was young when this happened; there was a nine year difference between out ages, and I was so jealous of her. She was this beautiful blond popular girl, and I was a cubby awkward girl that got along better with my mothers friends than kids my own age. I remember wanting to grow up and be just like her, even though I didn’t even know her.
She summed up our relationship with a line in one of the few e-mails we sent, “I always wanted to write, I just didn’t know what to say”
She never liked my mother, I think she always wanted her mom and our dad to get back together and the other woman put a damper in those plans. She just wanted us all to be together. It’s funny, during the two years she was sick the whole family saw each other more than the previous ten. So in a way she got her wish.
For the last year of her life she lived in an extended care facility. I learned more about humanity from my visits there than I could have ever anticipated. That place was full of the people that humanity sweeps under the rug. The despondent, the uncureable, society’s secrets. I watched my sister who was once the most beautiful girl I knew, laughing and living with people who most would avoid eye contact with. During her last days we basically lived there, and we got to know her new neighbours, and got to love them too. It was more than a place to forget people, it was a place to get to know new ones, and to learn their stories too. There were a man who was hit by a train, had serious brain damage and was abandoned by his wife and kids. His mother visited him every day, she could not forget him. There were the “crazies” the senile ones, the old man who would walk the halls and tell jokes to whoever he could. His favorite was: What is the first thing you put on in the morning? ------- Your feet on the floor. And the nurses, they were wonderful, they were in the room with us when she was struggling to hold on. They were holding our hands and crying along side us, some even coming in on their day off to say goodbye.
I grew more from the loss of a loved one more than I could have possibly imagined, and my sister, well, she wanted one family complete, and she got two.