2002-08-04 - 6:44 p.m.
I can always feel it coming with the heat and haze of August: the realization that another year has passed since my sister Sara died. Tomorrow, August 5, she will have been gone ten years. In 1992 I couldn't imagine this day, what it might feel like to look back upon this loss. Now we have been through all the stages of grief and arrived at acceptance.....without wanting to, without believing it was even possible. We have learned that you never get over losing someone you love, but somehow you do get used to it.
My mother has one videotape with everyone in our family in it, made before Sara was sick. I watched it for the first time the a few weeks ago. And there she was, just the way I remember, and yet.... her voice sounded so unfamiliar. I didn't remember her voice. I haven't heard it for ten years and I will never hear it again. I don't want to be forgetting things about her. Sometimes grief comes back in waves.
Ten years. I've missed having her in my life so much.
What can I say about her..... Sara was smart and funny and loving, a friend as well as a sister. The person who teased me because I never got a hairdo.The person I could trust with my darkest secrets. She had wild curly hair and the biggest smile, and a contagious laugh. She married the guy she had loved since their high school days, and they had two little boys; being their mom was one of the things she loved the most. When the kids got past babyhood, she went back to college and earned her master's degree in social work. Because she wanted to help people.... because she just cared so much about what happened to other people. She had a gift for loving others.
She died of cancer at the age of thirty-five, when her sons were eleven and eight.
It has been a long ten years in their young lives. The boys are mostly through the hard teen years now. The youngest goes off to college this fall. They have had to deal with their mother's death in increments, as children often do. Sometimes grieving anew as maturity opens up some new realization.They are both wonderful people. I admit, I cried looking at the recent high school graduation picture of her youngest son. He looks so beautiful and full of life and potential. So much like his mother. She would have been so proud.
Ten years: It seems like a passage of some kind, like a stone has been laid down and another taken up. I've been thinking of what I could do to acknowledge this day. Some way to say: we made it this far but we will never forget. Nothing formal or ceremonial seemed right. And in the end this is what I did:
I arose before dawn this morning and drove across town to the home of my sister Jenna, and together we went out to the park. We spread our quilt on the hill beside a young blue spruce tree overlooking a pond. This is where Sara's ashes are buried, beneath the roots of this tree, and the spot seems sacred. In the early morning quiet, we sipped our coffee and talked and remembered. Somehow, Jenna was the only one who could share this with me, the joy of remembering, the complicated feelings of loss, the responsibilites of surviving. We talked about Sara, and about other things, too-- kids, family stuff. We talked about how she would like it so much that we were there, together. About how much we hope that her sweet spirit still survives, somewhere, somehow.
And then Jenna said "I'm just so glad we have each other." And the emptiness left by Sara's death becomes a little less empty. After ten years, we are still learning that we can depend upon each other without the one in the middle. Our family is putting itself back together, and I've come to realize how very much my sister and brother mean to me. This is what I wanted from today. Recapturing both: past and future.
One of the things I learned when Sara was sick is that it is possible to be happy and sad at the same time. Even when something sad or frightening is going on in your life, there can still be moments of pure joy if you let them happen. If you can just allow that being happy doesn't mean you are disrespectful to the sad thing.
And so we do move on.
I have two silver bracelets that I wear every day of my life. One of them was Sara's and after she died I vowed that I would always wear it to remember her, so that thinking of her would always be a part of my day. Sometimes it reminds me how fleeting life can be, how important it is to live with no regrets. And sometimes I just say "Hi Sara, wherever you are."
The other bracelet was a gift from the universe. When Skootie and I were in New Mexico a few years ago, we were hiking in the Sandia Mountains. It was one of the most beautiful spots I had ever seen, and I was acutely aware of feeling so happy and alive and joyful there. We had been walking for hours and were high up in the mountains when we stopped to rest. And there, on a rock right beside us....was a silver bracelet. I have always wondered why it was there and in my more mystical moments felt perhaps there was some connection between the two. Some reason I should always be reminded to remember this: how I stood high on a mountain, in a place I had never been before, and felt the greatest sense of peace.
Never forget.
When we were three... (I'm on the left.)
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