i went as soon as my husband was home from his travels, and could watch our son. I was lucky, i got to spend a good day with my sister, where she was awake, mostly, and alert, and she knew me.
I didn't know what to do. Terminal illness, when treatment has concluded, doesn't take a lot of time. My other sister, my one remaining sister, and my stepfather had the routine perfected. And the pride of the patient, which always came between us, wouldn't allow me a lot of hands on time.
But i couldn't just walk away, and just as i knew in my guts on Friday it was time to get up there, i woke up Saturday morning knowing exactly what i had to do. It was like i was channeling my mother. They needed someone to cook.
To be fair, my oldest sister was the best cook, the one who had the most years and most attention from mom. I was always destined for a career, so it surprises me still when i know how to do things without looking up directions. Osmosis.
It is also Thanksgiving week. Being in my mother's house, despite the circumstances, meant it was wrong not to have things around for guests to nibble on, for distraught family members to take nourishment from.
So I went to the grocery store, and i cooked. I bought thigns for sandwiches, soup, casseroles, and pie Yes. Pie.
I believe that those things, the soup and the pie, chocolate, made from scratch, were the last things on this earth my sister tasted.
My flight home took six hours. When i left her this morning, she was resting peacefully, breathing well, but sound asleep. I stroked her hair and said, I'll see you later.
I knew as i said the words, the same ones i said to my mother the last time i saw her, that i wouldn't.
She lived fast. She didn't finish high school, though she got a GED later. She married 4 times, though twice to the same man. She had three children. She leaves a grandson.
She started smoking cigarrettes across the street from the jr high when she was 12, because it was cool, and because her sister who was such a "good girl" wouldn't like it.
She had a bad cough that she saw the doctor for in June. By then the cancer was stage 4.
She was 48 years old.
She died before my plane landed in Houston.
She once said, when asked about current events, that she didn't care about that stuff. If it didn't touch her world directly, then it didn't really matter. Life is relative, you know.
I thought that way about her for many years. But I was wrong.
i was wrong.
Rest in peace, little sister.
