When my mother died last year, I wrote a blog post that felt like it flowed through me. She was a lifelong smoker, so it had long left me dreading what would eventually happen: lung cancer. When the disease struck, I had months to ponder my mother's life before she succumbed. Because of that introspection, I was able to quickly form all those thoughts and feelings into an essay I'm still proud of.
Today I find myself in a very different circumstance. My sister Lisa has died, also after a battle with cancer. But I can't say that my thoughts are preprocessed: even with a couple months' warning, I'm still not ready to accept what has happened. She was supposed to have many more years ahead of her, and I can barely bring myself to believe that I won't see her again.
That false assumption may be what hurts the most. In recent years, we hadn't seen each other very often despite living about an hour from each other. Life was busy, as it always tends to be. Stress piled on top of stress, and there was many miles to go before we slept. There would always be time later though. Maybe next year, or the year after, we'd make sure to get together and spend some quality time. The bitter lesson learned is that none of us knows how much time we have left, and tomorrow is a precarious place for plans.
But I prefer not to dwell on lost opportunities or wallow in sadness. I'd rather take a moment to celebrate my sister.
Lisa and I were yin and yang. I was always quiet and shy and pragmatic; Lisa was outgoing and never let anything get in the way of her ideas. I was the A student that studied all night; Lisa would calculate the lowest grades she could get in the last quarter of the school year to still pass and then party all night. I liked to keep to myself; Lisa enjoyed being with people. Yet when we were together, we complemented each other well. Lisa did an admirable job trying to pull me out of my shell, as much of an impossible mission as that was. I'd like to say that I also made her a bit more pragmatic, but again, she never let anything get in the way of her ideas.
Things got off to a rocky start between us. She was seven years older, which is a prime difference for little brother annoyingness. Apparently there was even an incident that involved biting, though I don't remember it and am reluctant to believe it even happened. Still, many times over the years my mother would bring it up as the only time she actually spanked me.
But after a few bumps in the road, Lisa gladly stepped into the big sister role and guided me in the way only big sisters can. She helped me get my first job at StoryLand and offered me advice on the perils of high school. She even tried to get me to lighten up and party a little, though that effort failed. (All these years later, I wish I had taken that advice.)
After so many years of following our own paths, it's easy to forget how close a bond we had when we were younger. When my mother died, I looked through boxes of my old things stored in her attic. In one of them I found a bunch of post cards Lisa had sent featuring pictures of heavy metal bands (I was the fan, not her) with anecdotes from a cross country trip she was taking neatly detailed on the back. (Our biggest difference is in handwriting: Lisa always wrote with beautiful, flowing script, and I can't even read my own writing.) This made me remember some of the silly things we did for each other, like how I'd leave little notes tucked into the front door for her to find when she came home late at night.
When I went to college, Lisa invited me to visit her on the weekends. After a short commuter rail ride, I'd be nestled in her big couch, watching TV and mooching food like only a college student can. (I ate a LOT of chicken fingers during those visits after I found a stash in the freezer.) I never told her this, but those visits were a lifeline during the difficult transition of my college years.
After college, obligations came and time moved faster than it should. We saw each other less over the years, always relegating visiting plans to the purgatory of "soon." The most time that we spent with each other in recent years was during the long car rides to visit my mother during her illness. Sad journeys at the time, but I'm grateful for them now.
A few anecdotes are not nearly enough to express everything my sister was. Saying she had a "heart of gold," may be a trite cliché, but it is also incredibly apt. Lisa was caring and generous, and some of the biggest struggles she had in life stemmed from wanting to do too much for too many. A heart of gold, indeed.
I've always had struggles of a different kind. My pragmatism kept me focused on work to be finished and problems to be solved, and I spent a lot of time wrestling with dark thoughts on the edge of my mind and trying to make sense of things that don't seem to make sense. Because of this, I lost time I could have spent with Lisa. But then, I always thought there would be tomorrow. I also didn't often make the effort to see Lisa simply because knowing she was out there in the world, the beautiful spirit that was the yin to my yang, was enough for me. I deeply regret thinking that way now, and I'm once again stuck trying to make sense of something that doesn't make sense.
I don't feel I've done justice to the person my sister was, nor have I adequately expressed what she meant to me (nothing new for this shy little brother). But in her honor, I say to anyone that reads this, beware what you expect tomorrow to bring, and hold tight everything you love today. There is no sadder phrase than, "too late."
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