I read somewhere that someone was told once: “When a parent dies you lose the past. When a child dies you lose the future. But when a sibling dies you lose the past and future.”
I didn’t know how much those words would ring with so much truth it can shatter your soul.
I also didn’t know that I would, one day so soon, know the meaning of them.
On January 8, 2022, I lost my older sister. She was 50 years old. I wasn’t supposed to lose her. At least not for another 40+ years when we were both old and grey and had spent out whole lives getting to those ripe old ages where we would be surrounded by our grandchildren and still prattling on with all of the inside jokes we shared.
Oh, the jokes.
We had hundreds of thousands. Some of which I used in a dedication to her in one of my books. She loved that dedication.
The point is we were supposed to be old together. I wasn’t supposed to do this alone. I wasn’t supposed to deal with raising teenagers without her going through the same thing. I wasn’t supposed to watch my kids grow up, get married, and have children of their own without her going through the same thing. We were supposed to do this thing called life together.
When you lose a sibling you lose your past and your future.
My whole life has been wrapped up with this one person, and now this one person is gone. And a huge part of me is gone. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to proceed. I know that I’m not alone in the sense that I have my husband and my children, and the rest of my extended family. But I can’t help but feel with my sister gone, now when I lose my parents, I’ll be alone. There will be no one who will know the childhood memories and stories with me. It will be just me. There will be no one to challenge me to Friends trivia anymore. I still laugh at how she always tried to stump me but never could. There will be no one to quote movies with anymore. There will be no one I can call anymore to talk about things that happened in our youth or even now or tell her funny stories.
I loved to make her laugh. I only wish I did it more.
More so, I wish I could still do it.
My sister was kind. My sister was sweet. My sister loved her family with all her heart. My sister was a survivor who was tough as nails. She was a firecracker. She had to deal with some hard times in her 50 years, and I hated that she had them. I always wanted her to have better. She deserved that. She deserved the world. I am comforted to know she was in a happy place in life when she was called home. But it still doesn’t help fully.
I suppose in the end, I could write a book about all the coulda, woulda, shoulda’s I’m feeling right now.
Hug your loved ones and call them as much as you can. If you are far away, find the time to visit. Even with stupid Covid. I haven’t been home in two years and I was supposed to go home last September. Things came up and I rescheduled for February of this year.
February turned out to be too late.
I’m sorry to my parents of the loss of their daughter. I’m sorry to my daughters on the loss of their aunt who loved them so much. I’m sorry to her husband who lost a wife. I’m sorry to all my cousins and aunts and uncles who lost a cousin and niece. I’m sorry to all her friends and other family on their loss.
And I’m sorry to my nephews on the loss of their mother. She loved her boys so much. Although, I know she will be smiling down and watching them from Heaven, it’s not the same. She was supposed to watch them fall in love, get married, have children of their own. She was supposed to have it all. She would have been the best grandmother.
There’s a missing light in the world now.
And I feel as though a huge part of my past, present, and future is gone. know I will find peace in God, but I can’t deny that I’m so utterly lost and broken right now, I don’t even know what to do.
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