Year One

One year ago today, my sister closed her eyes for a nap in her room at the hospice.

She never woke.

She died of cancer, evil, wretched, horrible beast that it is. Her suffering the previous months (and even years, before her diagnosis) was intense and unbearable. Her tiny, frail body finally succumbed to it and I lost not only my closest sister but one of the biggest influences in my life in my childhood all the way into my teens and twenties.

I could go on and on here today telling you all about her; how she was a musical prodigy, a writer, as beautiful as she was brilliant. I could tell you about her sense of humor and obsession with science fiction. How she was a disk jockey at her college radio station and few things ever made her happier.

I could tell you the sad story of a rough time as a teen and searching for herself in her twenties. I could tell you the sadder story of the way our relationship changed in my thirties as she changed because she was unhappy in life. Regardless, there was always deep love and connection between us.

I’ll tell you that a brilliant light went out one year ago, and I’m still seeking its warmth everywhere I look. I’m still listening to her musical favorites and watching films that remind me of her. I still have her photographs on display, I especially treasure the ones of us together as children.

I urge you all, with all my heart, if something about your body feels wrong or ‘off’, go to the doctor. Don’t dismiss it as ‘nothing’. If we could turn back time and somehow convince my sister (as I tried to do, many times) that she needed to see a doctor maybe she’d still be with us.

Then again, her cancer was so invasive, so aggressive, perhaps there was no changing her fate. I’ll always wonder.

I just know this: I miss her, and it hurts like hell. I’m only now, after a year, beginning my grief journey for real.

For a year I’ve been putting it off, denying it to myself, shoving my emotions into little boxes and closing them off one at a time. The process has left me numb, yet, with a deep rage at the world just beneath the pain threshold. So I’m working now with my therapist and with a good book on grief (which are hard to find…) and beginning to unravel my feelings. Slowly, in small doses, because otherwise the pain of this grief would be completely overwhelming.

I remember her today and honor her memory with song, tears, and love.

Hold your loved ones close, people. My sister’s death at age 55 came just five months after her cancer diagnosis. I only got to see her in person twice in that time (due to Covid protocols/hospitalization issues). You don’t know how much time you’re going to be given with anyone in your life, appreciate every chance you have to show them all the love you can.

In the end, I know my sister loved me, and she knew I loved her. We spoke the words but more than that the way she looked at me the last time I saw her, in the eyes, even as I was forced to keep my mask on my face, spoke more of love than any words ever could.

“We had a good run,” she said to me, softly.

“Not long enough for me,” I replied. “I always pictured us someday like Grandma and Aunt Irene. 75 years old and sitting on a beach somewhere together. That’s what I wanted.”

I’ll never be ready to say goodbye to her. A hundred years more wouldn’t have been enough.

She’s one with the ocean now; her ashes were made part of a coral reef off of Florida. I can’t see or think of the ocean without thinking of her, but then so many things make me think of her it’s impossible to go an hour without her crossing my mind.

I just wish I could tell her one more time just how special she was, though I did tell her that.

My only consolation at this point is hoping she felt as loved as she was. Because I love her (present tense) mightily, and I always will.

Be at peace, dear sister. May your spirit fly free of pain, and may the ocean soothe you as you rest.

You’ll never be forgotten.

-bru

A Frozen Little Christmas

The temperature is well below zero outside, factoring in the wind chill.

It’s too cold and dangerous to travel unless absolutely necessary, so our holiday observances will be delayed a few days until the arctic freeze breaks and the salt works on the sidewalks, making it safe for people to walk outdoors again.

It was going to be a small gathering this year anyway, just us and in-laws who live locally. Covid worries (and other viruses as well) still make travel out of the question for me, and even if we’d had plans to get together with my offspring out of state, our flights would’ve been cancelled by the storm. If I never hear the words ‘bomb cyclone’ again it’ll be too soon.

I’m very lucky, though, at least of this writing I still have power, heat, water, and food. Those are the Christmas miracles I asked for this year, I know others haven’t been so fortunate or don’t have those kinds of privileges in daily life to begin with; so there’s nothing more a grateful heart could earnestly ask for this time of year.

In truth, I haven’t felt that much like celebrating anything. I have ongoing family worries I can’t really talk about, and the first anniversary of the death of my sister falls right between Christmas and New Year’s. Already a difficult time of year for me because the childhood loss of my grandfather (who was more like my father) happened right before New Year’s as well way back in 1982.

That loss changed my mother in ways she's never recovered from, so that was really the year I lost the mother I’d known as well. This year it’ll be forty years since Grandpa died and I still can’t get over how it feels like yesterday to the eleven year old girl who still lives inside of my fifty-one year old outer shell.

Holiday depression is real, ya’ll.

I know some folks experience it because they don’t have close family to celebrate with. Some are living alone and the isolation of the last three years in Covid world is hitting them hard. My heart hurts for them.

I wish I could be there for all those who feel alone over the holidays (whichever holidays they’ve been celebrating the past week or so; Happy Hanukkah, Happy Solstice, Merry Christmas…and soon Happy Kwanzaa. If I missed anything I apologize and offer "Happy Holidays" with the best intentions for inclusion). I wish I could have you over for hot chocolate and cookies and to share wishes that somehow 2023 will be better than the seemingly endless slog of 2022.

Wherever you are in the world this year, whether you’re facing health difficulties or mental health struggles or family problems or money worries or threats to your safety and security in any other way, please know you matter in this world. People do care.

I care.

If the holidays are too much to bear, turn off the music and TV, pick up a book, and transport yourself somewhere different. Video chat with a friend or relative if you can. Snuggle your companion animals, if you’re blessed to have them.

Do any healthy thing you can do to get through these stressful, tiring, over-exciting, endless, exhausting days between now and the New Year.

Send a good thought out to the world or to specific people… knowing someone out here (me) is sending good thoughts back your way.

Just hold on, because however you look at them, the holidays are almost over. Hold fast the good you may find in them, however they are significant to you, or ignore them altogether if that’s better for your health. Remember, if you can, the little and big victories you may have achieved this year even and especially if that feat was merely surviving it.

Be safe out there, my friends.

You are loved, believe it.

-bru

This Christmas

This is the first year since 2004 in which we have a full-sized Christmas tree.

In fact, this is the tallest tree we’ve ever owned, at 6.5 feet in height. It’s pre-lit, can change from colored to white lights with the touch of a button, and we got it on sale, to boot.

It’s a beautiful tree.

It makes me very sad.

The reason we hadn’t had a full sized tree since 2004 was because we always worried the cat would get into trouble with it. He’d eat it, or climb it, or some such thing. The cat was only eight months old when we adopted him (he was rescued from the streets and fostered before we got him) so very much still behaving like a mischievous kitten.

We adopted him in January of 2005. He was the center of our home and the love of my heart for seventeen years.

By last July, though, we knew his time was coming to an end. He was suffering. It was selfish to keep him alive any longer, for my own sake.

We made the hardest decision any pet-lover can ever have to make, and we said goodbye to him on July 20, 2022.

This was more than just a companion animal; he was my therapy cat in many ways and a real physical comfort to me when I’d panic. He was also loyally by my side through the period of time in which I had 15 medical procedures, including six eye surgeries (and during the time I was blind for a time before them). When I had to sleep in a chair for three months at one point, he slept on my feet on the ottoman every single night. He never left me without comfort and unconditional love.

Taking a nap on my husband's hand in 2019...

 

In the end, on top of his many medical problems he was also deaf, and showing signs of dementia. He’d forget where I was, and cry out for me until I came up to him and found him in the next room even though the apartment was only one bedroom and very small. It was heartbreaking.

He was so sick at the end, there was no question in anyone’s mind, including the vet’s, that we were making the right decision. It didn’t make it any easier.

I know I don’t have to explain to anyone who has ever loved and lost an animal just how big a hole in your heart they can leave.

I’ve been mourning for my sister’s loss (almost a year ago now, it’s impossible to believe) and in the almost five months since we lost Little Old Man Cat I’ve been especially sad.

Loving people is a complicated thing; because people are complicated beings. Animals love in a much purer way—a way that makes losing them seem incomprehensible, because it seems like something so pure and gentle and loving should indeed live forever.

Before he lost his hearing, Little Old Man Cat had his favorite music he loved to listen to. He loved Josh Groban’s work and also Celtic Thunder, but perhaps his favorite album of all time was Tom Chaplin’s Twelve Tales of Christmas. We’d listen to it year around, just because he’d always be so deeply contented when it was playing.

He’d always settle down into my lap and snuggle up near the speaker on my iPad and go to sleep listening to the music.

There’s a song on that album that has come to mean so much more to me in the past year: We Remember You This Christmas. It’s about missing the ones we’ve lost along the way, and telling them that we will remember them at Christmas.

Little Old Man Cat had a tiny Christmas stocking all his own; we’d put a catnip mouse toy in it every Christmas morning and give it to him. He’d sniff at it, get the mouse out, bat the mouse around, and generally have a wonderful time.

I was thinking about the stocking the other day and it turns out I wasn’t alone; my husband asked me if I knew where it had gotten to. I knew just where it was. I just wasn’t sure if I should hang it on the tree or not; for my sake, or for his. We agreed in the end that we should hang it up, and so it twinkles a little in the pretty lights, and it reminds us how lucky we were to have a cat who lived eighteen years, almost entirely by our sides.

Thank you, Little Old Man, for being who you were. There will never be another like you, and no one else could take your place in my heart.

Maybe we’ll meet again someday. Maybe you’ll meet me at the foot of the bridge when it’s my time.

If only I could be so lucky, I’d be grateful.

~bru