Here we are at another Oct. 5. For anyone who doesn’t click on the occasional Summer Vacation links and visit here regularly, Oct. 5 is the date my younger sister Erin died, nine years ago today (within the hour as I write this). To commemorate that this year I’m latching onto the number nine for whatever significance it might have, and instead of writing about one big theme related to her I’m breaking up the post into smaller ideas that have been on my mind over the past several days.
1 -- I haven’t been posting much lately and maybe wouldn’t have bothered to even write this one if I didn’t feel compelled to do so. It made me think -- why a special post to mark the date? Why write about it at all? Why share? To what purpose? Am I doing this just for the attention, or to purge any grief that echoes back this time of year, or to find a way to hold onto the grief more tightly and really own it? I know I’m not the only person who’s ever had someone die. I know very well nine years is a long time. But I also realized tonight there are only about sixteen or seventeen people out of the eighty people currently on staff at my school who were around back when Erin was sick and dying. It seems odd to me to be surrounded by so many people on a daily basis who have no real context to appreciate how defining of an event her death was to what my life evolved into. Sometimes I have to remind myself about that, then remember it’s possible people reading this only know anything about her through what I’ve written. But I guess that’s the point of doing it. Her biggest fear was being forgotten after she died. All I’m doing is making sure that doesn’t happen.
2 -- I’ve noticed over the past week that much in the same way I’ll give most of my music library a rest during December and listen to holiday music, I have a short list of albums that get a lot of rotation in late September and early October because of the associations I’ve built between them and her death. If I play Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising” I’ll remember how my family struggled to maintain any optimism we could find right after she received her first frightening diagnosis. I’ll listen to Peter Gabriel’s “Up” if I have some morbid need to remember what it felt like to let that optimism disappear. I’ll listen to Green Day’s “American Idiot” and recall how it fueled my anger and pain in the weeks right before she died, and how My Chemical Romance’s “The Black Parade” would have been a perfect companion album to it had it been released a year or two earlier. I’ll play through Neal Morse’s “Testimony” or Spock’s Beard’s “Snow” to take in their concurrent overarching themes of darkness and redemption, both of which were very real presences in our lives during those two years.
3 -- To answer definitively the question some people have asked and others have likely wondered: Yes, the manuscript I rewrote this summer, Following Infinity, was heavily inspired by my experiences of losing a sibling. It was really intended to be something of a response to what I heard so many people say as our family was going through the process of watching Erin die and then facing it all after she was gone: “I just can’t imagine what you’re going through.” I always thought after I wrote it, “Yeah? Well, maybe this will give you an idea.” And I think it does. The comment I heard about it from a reader that resonated with me the most came from a friend who read the original draft a few years ago. She had recently experienced a painful loss of her own and after she finished reading it she told me, “I had no idea that everything I was feeling was normal.” It was humbling to hear, but also a relief. Because I didn’t really know all of those feelings were normal at first, either.
4 -- It’s too easy for me to conjure up a false memory of Erin playing with my parents’ dogs, Shamus and Butch, particularly while they are staying at my house. I see them play and I think back to how she played with so many dogs she loved in her lifetime, and it’s all so easy to put those elements together into the same scene. The same could be said for the other dogs in the family -- Willow, Mac, and especially Toby. It doesn’t fit to think we could have these five dogs who are such a big part of our family and she never knew any of them.
5 -- This summer when my family did the Relay for Life it felt like an afterthought. Everything was so routine: I set up the online donation page, we all pasted a few links on our time lines, friends and family made their donations, step by step by step, going through the motions on remote control after doing it all so many times. While there, my older sister and I decided that next year -- which will mark the 10th year after Erin’s death -- should be a year where we really make our Relay participation into something significant. It’s usually held either the first Friday in August or the last one in July, so save the date, people. Everyone is invited. Anyone who has ever been affected by cancer in any way and would like to take a swing at it in retaliation, or just wants to come and hang out on what is usually a pleasant summer evening should make plans now. We’re getting shirts made, we’re going to raise a busload of money, and we’re going to take over the event. I’m ready to say right now that I will put myself through just about any favor people could need help with to raise donations, as long as it isn’t illegal or ethically questionable. You think I’m kidding? Test my limits. I figure for ten years, $10,000 is a nice round goal to aim for.
6-- Erin has been gone long enough that our family has actual traditions about how we commemorate her death each year. But this year, for the first time, our parents are traveling on Oct. 5 and won’t be here to be a part of it. That feels kind of weird. So instead of following through with tradition and organizing a larger event, Jenny and I decided we’d keep it simple and just take an evening to get together and acknowledge the significance of the day. We figured that as important as Erin was (and still is) to so many people, in the end we’re the only ones who could claim her as our sister.
7 -- At one point in the past few days it occurred to me it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do a kind of personal inventory and take a few moments during what is always one of the lowest points of my year to consider what I have in my life that is good. This isn’t always easy to do since I tend toward the self-critical, but I did manage to think of a short list of some very important things: 1) I’ve been able to build myself a reasonably secure and comfortable life, with the support of many people. 2) I have an extraordinary family that consists of several dozen unusually close and loving people; I couldn’t adequately describe what it’s like to live inside of that without sounding like I’m falling back on the kind of superlative language that seems too strongly stated to be real. 3) Even though I am by nature extremely introverted and guarded, and I’m very aware of how that combination of traits makes it difficult for people to feel they know me, I’m still lucky enough to have a tight circle of close friends made up of people I know would do nearly anything for me and vice versa, whether I get to see them every day or a few times a month or maybe only every year or two. They accept and even possibly value my collection of idiosyncrasies. I can find myself genuinely surprised to discover how much they care for me, and I hope they know how appreciative I am that at some point they bothered to push their way into my life as deeply as they have.
8 -- Part of this memorial post business usually involves an excerpt from the memoir I wrote (mostly for myself) following Erin’s death. This could be filed under the category of “Here’s what it was really like if you can’t relate.” This describes what it was like about 48 hours before:
Evening was tough. Erin woke a couple of times just as I was thinking about going home. She snapped wide awake once so Jenny gave her more medication and she was able to drink some water. She even asked for a Popsicle, the closest thing to actual food she'd had in days. She saw I was in the room and asked me to sit behind her on the bed so she could lean against me, letting her sit up and breathe easier as she went back to sleep. I had a painful cramp in my chest after I sat there for a few minutes and my entire right leg fell asleep, but she didn’t weigh much anymore so I got through it. It was hard to sit behind her and see everyone in the room crying as she shuddered her way back to sleep. I started timing my breathing so our rhythms would match and I wouldn’t disturb her. Mom knelt beside the bed holding Erin's hand in both of hers, silently praying. Jenny quietly told her it was okay to let go. My mouth was already behind her ear so I just talked to her, saying much of the same: It's okay to go, you're done fighting now, we'll get through it, you don't need to worry, you don't have to fight anymore, Arthur and Dave and Grandma Grace are waiting for you, you'll be able to run again, you'll laugh without coughing, you'll stand under your own power, you’ll breathe deeply and completely without any pain, you’ll see the ocean whenever you want, you’ll see every moment of your nephews' lives as they grow up, you'll watch sunsets that never have to end. When she was finally calm again I was able to slip out and get some blood back to my leg. It was the last time I would ever see her conscious, and the last time I ever heard her voice.
9 -- There’s a reason I picked that particular passage this year. Not long ago I listened to a podcast episode called “How Dying Works.” It was a fascinating discussion about everything involved in the process. Many of the things mentioned were things I recognized. One point made was that the five senses stop operating at different times, with the sense of touch and the sense of hearing being the last two to go. I heard that and thought back to that final Saturday night as Erin fell back asleep leaning against me while I quietly spoke to her, letting her know it was okay to stop the fight.
Even nine years later, learning that brought me a small moment of closure to know that during that last moment of real connection I had with her she still knew I was there.
