My sister Shirley would have turned 79 today, August 2. Three years and 32 days since her death, and the ache of missing her is as deep as it ever was. No drugs, no time passing will change that.
This photo is one of a series from a wedding in Arizona. Shirley brought her youngest son with her. He’s now a father of four. Time flies, but the heart never forgets.
My sister Shirley would have turned 78 today, August 2. I don’t know when the feature photo was taken but it was sometime in the 1960s. Even though the photo is decades old, it’s how I remember her. In my memory, no matter how much I change, she doesn’t.
I miss her. She knew how to party.
Today–August 2–is my sister Shirley’s 77th birthday. If she were still with us.
I wrote this micro memoir a few months ago.
Sister
It wasn’t that hot, not that day. But a line of white crusted her open mouth, and the white hair capping her head was damp with sweat. She leaned sideways as if she would fall out from the passenger seat. I reached out to her, but she waved me off, holding onto the car door as she pivoted on the seat. I held down my scream as she jerked her body up and out of the car. A puppet missing a few strings, she was no longer its master.
I hovered behind her, torn between rushing up to her, making her take my arm, and running away, getting back in my own car, and flying south, away from the sight of her decline, away to my old photos of her when she was a teenager, holding me on her lap; or a young bride beaming next to her equally young husband; or the farmer’s wife, posing for the local newspaper with her husband and three boys; or a contented grandmother, toddlers on either side of her, intent on the book she was reading to them.
She walked through her house, me and our husbands close behind, but not so close to make her angry. She picked up one, then another of the shawls I had knitted for her. Purple, gray, and brown lacey patterns draped over the backs of chairs, ready for when she felt a chill or when she wanted to feel the love that grew within me as I ran to catch up and close the gap of 11 years between us.
When she called several years ago and told me she had Parkinson’s, I felt time fall away. I couldn’t be that mysterious hobo of a little sister anymore, a role I luxuriated in, so different from her openly traditional wife-and-mother. My heart ran ahead of me, trying to make up for the years when I was too busy living my own life, never realizing we couldn’t run fast enough.
Marie at 1 Write Way 