My Missing Sister

I woke up this morning from a dream in which I somehow lost my sister in our neighborhood Mexican restaurant. We’d parked, and were getting ready to go in, but a friend from work was walking past and distracted me with a silly conversation. When I looked back, my sister was gone.

In the dream, I went into the restaurant and looked all over for her. The building grew, as buildings do in dreams. There were arcade games, a water slide, crowds of people milling around. I kept walking and walking and looking, unable to find her. Finally I left the restaurant, but looked through the windows of its tiny bar. No one was in there. And then I woke up, and remembered that my sister is gone.

I got up, made lunch for my grandson, helped him put on his rather elaborate basketball shoes because today is basketball club. He said, “I keep forgetting how old was she.”

“Auntie Cat?” I confirmed. “She was sixty-seven.” I finished up packing his lunch. “I know that sounds old. But it isn’t. Not really.”

My daughter came out, ready for work. I told her the Mazatlan dream and teared up. She hugged me, and then they were out the door, talking of school library books, additional Wimpy Kid titles, school pick-up, and so on. I made coffee and came to my “desk” and sat down, took up my phone to send my usual good morning text to my sister, and teared up again.

I wondered who to text instead. I wondered where to send this energy, this basic daily greeting of Good morning, sweet sissy. Because she is not there to get the texts. She will not be here for the two times a day I text her to confirm that she’s taken her meds, or the inevitable daily call to talk about nothing and everything. My sister is gone.

Just since Saturday, there is so much to tell her. I would have, for instance, told her about that dream in which she disappeared. She would have told me that of course she wasn’t in the bar, because she’d be fifteen years sober in October.

Yesterday, I would have told her in detail about phone calls with our relatives: our stepmom Jo, our cousin Amy in Walla Walla, Our cousin Amanda in South Carolina, our uncle David in Minnesota. But of course I made all these calls to tell them that my sister is gone. She is gone, and I can’t tell her about these calls.

I am exquisitely supported. My husband is a rock. My daughters are surrounding me. I have my brother and his wife, what remains of my family, and we are all trying to help my nephew, who is destroyed and still determined to do all the work and do it right.

I have wonderful friends who are sending love and showing up. I am lucky enough to have friends have known me for so many years that they’ve known my sister right alongside me, with all her struggles, and all my struggles with her. People who know the whole story are my balm. Over and over, I hear that my relationship with her is a miracle, and they wonder how it happened. Because it could have gone so differently.

My sister was nearly impossible, and she was also incredible. For the last thirteen years, I have had the sister that I always wanted. We shared the closeness we had as little girls, a bond that frayed in our teens because she had so, so much to hide. We had many years of conflict and estrangement. But we worked on it, and we fixed it.

I tell myself, at least you had that. Think of the regret you’d feel if you hadn’t done that, Karen. But the trouble is, that’s why it hurts so much now. She is so woven into my life that I feel ripped in half.

The Twelve Steps to Forgiving an Impossible Sibling