The Final Day that Plays Out

Every year, I go through a nightmare.  A nightmare that began 12 years ago.  Today is the final day.  The day her casket closes forever.  The day they put her in the dark.  The day that has reverberated to the point of shattering.  Higher than opera singer.  The glass of my heart.  The glass that always was half full, and I held it smiling because the empty part I drank.  I think of this glass and want to smash it, yet still clutch it close to me. 

My sister died.  And died.  For the longest days of my life she died.  And she's never coming back.  Twelve years have gone by.  I can still hear her laugh.  I can still hear that Pink Panther snicker.  Time has only made my heart miss her more.  She wasn't perfect.  So far from it.  But she was my sister.  We had the same Mom and the same Dad.  We were two of a kind.  I was hers and she never let me forget she was mine.  It's the little things about her I miss.  I miss hearing Faye-Faye.  I miss being her Faye-Faye.  Someone she looked up to and was proud of.  Her big sister.

She sacrificed for me.  She stuck up for me.  She had so much heart.  She stood up like a super hero in front of what might as well have been a bulldozer.  We took licks for one another.  We licked each other's wounds.  She kept the emptiness away and I didn't thank her enough.  I was too busy with my self important life to really see who she was and how much she mattered.  She still matters to this day.  Right now, she matters because I keep her memories close and in the deep dark she still chases demons away.

 

Me and My Sister Lynn

 

It never gets easier for me.  The loss of my sister.  I live each year trapped in this horrible event .. holding my breath until the end.  That's today.  I want to feel different, yet I do not.  I don't accept her death at all.  I still feel like she could bust into the door at any moment.  I look for her.  I chase her in my dreams.  I see her in my daily life.  I look down into my daughter's face and see her laughing eyes looking back at me. 

She won't ever know my daughter.  It makes me sad and angry.  I stopped pointing fingers a long time ago.  But I'm still mad.  Every year, on the 19th, I go to the cemetery and I let myself feel that pain and I cry.  I cry for everyone to see and I don't care.  It hurts.  I don't want to stop hurting.  Somehow if I stop feeling that feeling, her death becomes just another meaningless tragedy.  I won't give that up.  She will always matter.