Six Months Without My Sister, Sofie
It’s been six months since you died — six months without sending you cards, picking out gifts for Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, your thirtieth birthday, or for no reason at all.
So many cute things still remind me of you. All the random once-gifts — dresses, jewelry, anything llama themed — torment me now. I get a sinking feeling when there’s something I want to buy for you, and for a brief millisecond I nearly forget that you’re gone.
“My little sis,” I used to call you. You’d email and text and pick up the phone and say: Hi, Sissy!
Until the age of twenty-nine, which is when you died.
Every day, there’s something I want to tell you. Something funny or annoying or silly. A confession I could make only to you. Like my internalized sexist habit of scrutinizing the make-up worn by female newscasters. “That oddly makes me miss you,” you’d texted back, after I first shared this habit during the last election cycle
Six months without making me laugh. Six months without taking away my worries. Six months without putting me in my place.
Six months without the very best TV and movie recommendations. Six months without picking up the phone on a Friday night and catching up.
Six months without hearing about Leo and Luna, your beloved cats. Six months without filling me in about your weekend at the hot springs, or your trip to the coast. Six months without asking my advice about some job offer or another, as you were always applying for jobs, a skill I’d taught you as a teen. You were always courting possibility, as that’s what people do in their twenties.
You’d already started referring to yourself as a thirty-year-old woman, though you died five months before this milestone birthday. I’ve watched your friends turn thirty on social media, and my heart breaks a little, as I’m sure their hearts do, too, at the unfairness of it all.
You would surely have something philosophical to say to me, if you were around to comment on your death — maybe something inspired by one of the Buddhism books that Uncle Bill brought over to my house. He brings over boxes of your belongings every few weeks, as if rationing the emotional toll it will take to sort through everything. The books and keepsakes remain with me, and I donate the clothing to Goodwill.
Someone will be thrilled to wear your sexy black Gucci top, your cute yoga wear, the various hand-me-downs I’d given you over the years.
I dropped off children’s books and jewelry at your friend E’s house the other day. She pressed my hand on her belly to feel the baby, who will be coming later this summer. I picked out a ballet-themed outfit for the baby shower gift, as I thought this is what you would’ve chosen had you been around.
I went to the ocean on the six month anniversary of your death, left a memorial rock at the Little Log Church in Yachats, where you were my maid of honor at my wedding. I wrote your name in the sand at two beaches, and honored you at with a moment of silence at the time of your death.
Your spirit and your memory have helped guide me through the last several weeks of delayed grief. I hope your spirit sticks around, as losing a sibling is one of the hardest losses anyone can face.
