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2. SHE is no longer the understudy.

SHE had been sitting alone at this table for 17 minutes now.  She fidgeted with her dangly necklace, checked her phone habitually, felt her face flush with embarrassment. She stood out in this place like Rudolph’s glaring nose. No, worse. She was the inappropriately naked character in the everybody’s worst dream, wandering around with no place to hide. Could she possibly be more conspicuous?  People were staring at her. And not just people – couples – this was definitely a romantic restaurant. She felt their eyes pitying, wondering, “That poor woman. Surely she’s not eating alone?”  

She second-guessed her decision to come inside and be seated rather than wait in the car, but it was a hot August evening. Getting a table had seemed a better option.

Her husband should have been here a half-hour ago now, but he was routinely late. He wasn’t answering her texts, so he was likely on his way. Should she go ahead and order drinks? No. This is their anniversary. No hurry.  She would continue to wait for him.   

The waiter came to the table a second time. She smiled awkwardly and assured him her dinner companion would be there any minute. Then came the message: “Got distracted. Sorry. Don’t have time to meet you now, but you can come here and maybe make it in time to have barbecue with us.”

I’m sorry, WHAT??

He had just stood her up on their anniversary?

Her heart began to race; she felt her face flush with anger and humiliation, and that all-too-familiar feeling of being unimportant.  

She now had the choice to join him for – of all things – baked beans and coleslaw with his buddies, or leave the lovely restaurant, go back to the hotel, and feel sorry for herself.

Suddenly she realized her third option, and this moment would serve as the catalyst for her future. A simple return text, filled with measureless subtext: “I won’t be joining you.” She had always been an afterthought in his life, and his treatment caused her to always put herself in the background as well. That ended with this moment. She would no longer settle for the role of understudy in her own life.

She put her phone away, took a deep breath and looked around the room. Suddenly it seemed no one noticed at her at all.  

The waiter returned a third time. “I’m having dinner alone tonight,” she said, looking him in the eye. She perused the entrees and mustered the confidence to have dinner – very publicly – alone.

1. Fully Alive in the Dark

SHE hears voices.

Engulfed in the darkness, she hears voices. Voices giving guidance, offering words of hope, encouragement, inspiration. Voices assuring her she isn’t alone, insisting the depths aren’t as black as she has painted them.

Engulfed in the darkness, the voices try to fix her, change her, help her. Well-meaning voices pervading her with their wisdom, their experience, their truth. Myriad voices, spouting fountains of words that only push her deeper.

Indistinguishable Voices.
Garbled Sounds.
Empty Noise.
Cold Words raining down on her.

Engulfed in the darkness, she huddles alone. Submerged in a pool of tears, drowning in the incessant chattering outside the obsidian walls that drive her soul further inward.

The voices urge:
“Hang on.” But without light, she can find nothing to grasp.

“Things aren’t so bad.” But the death of hope eclipses every good thing.

“Keep looking up.” But in the desolation, her open eyes are blind.

Engulfed in the darkness, the foundation beneath her erodes, day after day, week after week, month after month. Unwillingly, she puts down roots there among the shadows of death. No bloom, no bud, no flower. A colorless weed in the mud.

No desire to survive, yet desperate to live.

The voices continue, but she has long ceased distinguishing their words.

Engulfed in the darkness, a hand slides under her own. No sound, just touch. The warmth softens her forever-numb fingers. The hand clasps her own, unafraid to grip the murky darkness. “Who are you?” she whispers, straining to catch the voice.

But the only sound is silence, collapsed by the comfort of contact.

In the darkness, the hand engulfs her, holds her, lifts her exhausted body – unable to stand independently – but grateful to be upright.

Deliberately, increasingly, the stabbing pain of lifeless limbs regain feeling. She lingers for some time, resting in these hands. Hands that do not diminish the darkness. Hands that do not promise change. Hands that simply hold her until she finds the strength to stand again on her own.

The darkness has not gone, but she is now fully alive in the midst of it.

There is always a last time.  The ugly truth about last times is they often come without warning.  The last time you carry your youngest child.  The last time you run and play like a kid.  The last time you feel butterflies in your stomach. The last time you hold someone in your arms…never to be with them again.

Such was the last time I saw my sister’s face. She was twenty-eight. Tall. Blonde. Beautiful. Passionate. Protective. Determined. Spirited. She left me on a Friday. She would leave the rest of the world twenty minutes later.

After her funeral, we mourners sat in the dark together as a forever incomplete family, the light now offensive to us. Staring at the walls, unable to look at one another, the constant threat of nausea chewing our insides, trying to make sense of this new unthinkable reality.

A well-meaning casserole-bearer tried to lighten the mood: “You must stop this!  Stacey would not have wanted you to be pitiful like this!”

Had my body not been surreally numb, I’m certain I would have laughed aloud. Still, I managed the words: “Excuse me??  Did you KNOW my sister? She would be highly insulted and offended were we not sitting here in our metaphorical sackcloth and ashes, completely miserable in her absence. She would scream, ‘Do you not miss me at all?!’” And  that was the truth. 

We didn’t remain in the dark forever. The numbness slowly dissipated and feeling returned, but with the same pins-and-needles stabbing at our very souls to remind us there will always be pain in continuing to live without her.

Tomorrow she would have celebrated her 50th birthday.  She would have loathed the half-century mark, and I would have razzed her about it mercilessly. She would have arranged to get her hair colored, and have her toes painted.  She would have bought a kicky new pair of ankle boots (which she lived in, as she had legs to her neck and hated that her jeans were always too short.) I would have wrapped up a fabulous gift complete with a wildly inappropriate card, and we would have indulged in chocolate cake topped with chocolate icing topped with chocolate ice cream topped with hot fudge. Because, you know, 50.

But 28 was the last birthday I would celebrate with her.  I didn’t know it would be the last one. I don’t remember it. I don’t know if I went to Georgia or if she came home to Kentucky  or if we met in Nashville . I don’t know where we went to dinner. I don’t know what I gave her. I don’t know because nobody told me to pay attention. I didn’t know it would be the. last. one.  

Saturday, a dear friend allowed me to walk with him to the graveside of his sweet wife, Jackie. His last moment was a year ago.  Mine was twenty-one years ago. Neither of us expected our last words to these precious women would be the last ones they would ever hear. We have regrets. Unfinished business. Uncaptured embraces. Unspoken words. Things we would have done, time we would have spent, words we would have said… had we known it would be the last time. So he spoke to the ground as though she could still hear him, and I fought, unsuccessfully, to hold back tears. 

Time is cruel when it comes to grief, as the wounds scab over but never truly heal, and sometimes the slightest bump will cause them to break open and bleed as though fresh.

When I sat down to write this a few minutes ago, I had no idea what thoughts would land on the page.  I’m not going to edit them, I’m just going to leave this here as an Ode to My Sister: “Thoughts on Her Not Having Another Birthday.”

“Stacey, it’s hard to believe you would be fifty.  It’s even harder to believe you’re not.”

So…Happy Birthday from down here.  May you find an angel to paint your toenails a lovely shade of pink, and indulge in some heavenly chocolate.

See ya, sis.