Growing up, my big sister's birthday was a Very Big Deal. It made us 2 years apart for the rest of the year, until my birthday and then back to only 1 separating us. Your birthday in May was always full of sunshine and flowers and new beginnings; often Mother's Day, too. You had wonderful backyard parties and pool parties and even astoundingly as we were land locked prairie girls, a beach party. You were popular and athletic and graceful, and lots of people came to celebrate you.
Mine, on the other hand, the 12th day after Christmas--dark, cold, nothing to do and everyone was broke.
So your day was for many reasons special for me, too. I admired you so much, wanted to grow up to be like you in every way, even though you were So Much Older. I'd get my chance, someday, to have all of the confidence and skill and popularity that you always seemed to have. My turn would come.
Well, fuck.
In the 5 years since you've been gone, your birthday has become a touch point for grief. I mean, of course. Up until this year, I took the day off. Every year, I toast you with your kids. I make your favourite foods with mine. I savour the sun and the flowers and bawl my eyes out, wishing for just one more chance to hear your laugh and to see your sapphire eyes light up.
You had such a great laugh.
Growing up, we didn't have much in terms of parental attention. We were on our own, and we knew it. That's terrifying to a young kid; especially an awkward, sensitive one like me. You were my sure thing. I counted on you like I counted on the sun.
I made certain assumptions.
I thought you'd be there forever. I thought you'd always have birthdays, a year and a half before I had them. You'd explain what it was like to be that age, how to prepare, all the things I'd get to do now that I was that old. And you'd be a little older, a little better off, a little farther ahead. But we would be together, following this pattern that we assumed would outlast our parents, our bullies, and our awkward phases.
FUUUUUUCK. I mean, what is there to say?
We didn't plan for anything else. We were young, without any trustworthy attuned adults, and we just made shit up. I think we both decided that we had been through things that were so hard, we could get through anything the future could throw at us. It's such a dark story, and it's kind of a relief that half of it died with you, because it sucked. Like a lot of high ACE kids, we didn't plan on living past our youth. For us, that magic old age number was 30. We said it out loud. It was an assumption between us, that we would be worn out by then and just fade into dust.
So we didn't plan past that.
Fuck.
You made it to 50 years, 5 months and 29 days. I'm now at 54 years, 4 months and 4 days.
I'm OLDER than you.
FUUUUUCK.
Does this mean I'm finally in charge? Does this mean I have to know what I'm doing? Do I blaze a trail, now? Like, what. You just make shit up and hope it sells? What's the plan, here?
Besides cursing, I really have no idea what to do. In the 5 and half years since you died, I've been kind of lost. Unmoored. Because this was never the plan. This was never how the story went. The story we made up served us so well; it was how we survived the unthinkable, for so long. All we had was each other, and we assumed that we always would.
Cancer has ruined the plot. Cancer has taken my only caretaker, my only witness, my only partner in facing all the bullshit and finding a way through. Cancer stole you from my future. It took my safety net, my instruction manual, my laugh track, my muse, my advisor, my voice; my very best friend who knew it all and loved me anyway.
And now, on your birthday, it's me that gets older and not you.
I'm getting wrinkles and sore hips and Life Experience. I'm chasing whippersnappers off my lawn and learning bird calls and finding Sensible Footwear. I'm going to retirement parties and celebrating a new generation of babies and walking beside others facing tragedy or just pain in the ass parents Aging Ragingly. I've faced the death of one of our parents and I've got no idea what to do with the other. I'm raising teenagers, oh my! and thinking seriously about a Phd to soothe the empty nest ahead. I'm getting my eyes checked and yes, going for colonoscopies and Thinking a Lot About Fibre. I wonder out loud why all the college kids stay up so late and drive so fast.
It was never supposed to be me. You were supposed to get here first.
Sometimes when I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror in passing, I jump because I recognize you in my own face. When I hear my voice on a recording, I hear yours. I use your phrases and I have your mannerisms and I think I'm developing the ability to Shut the Fuck Up and Look Smug. I'm taking responsibility and breaking cycles and Learning Hard Things.
It feels like I'm wearing a costume that fits a little too well.
Maybe I'm hiding behind you, still. Maybe I'm afraid that as the details of my memory of you fade with time, that I'll fade, too.
I'm supposed to want to be older. That's supposed to be the meaning one makes of tragedy--to love and live more intentionally, more boldly, more reverently. But the truth is, I'm mostly looking in the rear view mirror, because forward, without you, still terrifies me.
Happy birthday, big sister. I miss you.
Little.
