Seeing My Sister

Today, despite the snow, I made it to the hospital to visit my sister. She was tending to various "household" paperwork projects, or trying to as the medication they were giving her to help prevent the nausea from the chemotherapy was making her sleepy. We chatted a little between paper sortings and then I read to her while she ate lunch. When the snowstorm got too frisky I headed back home. The thiry to forty minute trip took me almost three hours. I do not know if I will be able to get through the snow tomorrow to get in to see her or not, but I will try if the roads are not too bad. It is a simple thing to be calm and cheerful around Patty right now, and it is something I want to continue to do for her if not for myself, but arriving home as the day winds down and there are more and more quiet moments to traverse poses new challanges the bustle of the day will not allow and I begin to feel the sting of tears long waiting to be shed as they force themselves into my eyes and drown my heart in an ache that is difficult to adequately describe.

I love my sister and I know she loves me. Neither of us being perfect, that fact of our mutual lives is not always in evidence to the extent it should be, but the special moments do happen and remain a vital and important part of our relationship as sisters. It is when I see Patty in my mind's eye, lying on the hospital bed with toxic chemicals entering her bloodstream because that is the only thing that might save her life, or at least extend it - giving us more time - that I find myself weakened by what we are all going through with her, although we all also realize the largest and most difficult burdens are her's, her son's, and her daughter's.

We all hope for the best possible outcome for these treatments but we also try to keep in mind the realities of her illness. It is a tightrope I hope not too many people are forced to walk on in their lives. You move ahead feeling a little like you are about to fall off somehow, but then you look up and realize that you are not really dizzy even though you could have sworn you were about to plunge into some nameless, frightening abyss with no bottom to it - where you would initially fall and then just keep falling - forever. I think that is the part where the fear of loss lives, that place of no return that lurks evilly around each corner as you and all of your loved ones go through this "thing," this vast and unwelcome experience you wish would just end as long as it could be like it had never even happened; everything, healthy, happy and all right, somehow.

Perhaps some day science will grant humanity the chance to experience full and extremely lengthy lives lived with no fear of premature death and loss of loved ones; where "picture perfect" will be the norm instead of grief, fear, and pain. I wonder what there will be to take its place in the training of our characters, the teaching each of us needs to learn how to survive such devastations - emotional and physical. Perhaps humanity will prove too shallow and unworthy of the benefit but something deep inside of me would still very much like to find out "for real."

God bless you and all of your loved ones. May you all feel and be as safe as you were the day your mothers first held you, your fathers first touched your tiny fingers, the times you nestled within the bosom of your families, falling asleep as you listened to the drone of the conversation of your parents lulling you to sleep, resting your heads upon warm laps, cozy together as night quietly claimed the remainder of your day.