My oldest sister Charlotte would have been 79 today, October 7, if she had lived. She died on November 26, 2022.
Charlotte was my mother’s first baby.
She was a few months shy of 13 when I was born. Here she is with my brother sitting between her and our sister Shirley. I am, of course, the baby in the photo.
Over the years, Charlotte blossomed into a beautiful young woman. I was often gobsmacked by her beauty. None of these photos have dates so the order is possibly random.
My sisters Charlotte and Shirley took radically different paths from each other. Shirley married the man she first met when she was 16 and stayed happily content with him and their growing family until her last breath. Charlotte suffered through two failed marriages and then became a widow after six short years into her third marriage to a man who possibly loved her more than all the others that came before him. He also loved to sing as did she.
Charlotte had rheumatic fever when she was a young adult, leaving her with a weak heart. She was cautioned against having children because of it. According to one of my cousins, Charlotte had the fever during her first marriage, and it was our mother, not Charlotte’s husband, who got her medical care.
I often viewed Charlotte as a tragic figure, looking for love in the wrong places, struggling to support herself, pining for the children she could not have. She eventually found happiness in St. Petersburg, FL, which too quickly turned to grief, but through it all, she had friends who made her feel loved.
I failed at that. During the last several years, Charlotte and I shared a mutual dislike, due in no small part to our political differences. When my mother started spending winters with her, we would drive down from Tallahassee and visit, trying to be as pleasant as one could be with someone who didn’t welcome our presence. It hurts to remember those tense visits, the TV so loud that we could hardly converse, my sister quick to argue if I said something she didn’t like. I came away from one visit, the last one we had, feeling that my sister actually hated me.
We had had some good times together, times when we’d go out for a few drinks, long phone calls where she’d tell me stories about coworkers, the two-and-a-half weeks I stayed with her while she underwent heart valve replacement surgery. There was something about my sister that made you want to help her. I might have gone a bit overboard with that back then, helping her when she didn’t want or need it, and then feeling resentment it when she didn’t seem appreciative. That wasn’t fair of me.
Eventually our phone calls became shorter and farther between. I felt that the harder I tried to find common ground with Charlotte, the more I realized what little in common we had. It hurt. It hurt to call her and not be able to say something as simple as “How are you doing?” without her snapping back, “I’m fine. Of course, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be fine?” It hurt to think that the sound of my voice was enough to twist her mood into something ugly.
It hurt, but what hurts even more is that the last time we did talk on the phone, when she was in hospital because she couldn’t breathe on her own anymore, that last time I was so close to telling her I love her. The words were in my mouth, but I couldn’t say them. We had been so angry with each other for so long. Somehow I knew that by saying I love you, I’d be saying Good-bye. And I just couldn’t do that. I couldn’t admit that she was dying.
Marie at 1 Write Way 