Sister of Mine.

One photograph can rip your world apart just as easily as it can shore you up and open doors to memories of other times. The photo I saw this evening tore my heart open. An image of my niece reading to her mother, my sister, who lies back in a reclining wheelchair, mouth gaping, eyes empty, walking away from us all.

She was my very best friend as a child, teenager, adult, and always. She and I walked back and forth to elementary school together each and every day. When it rained and the sidewalks were carpeted with earth worms, I would carefully pick them up and return them to the grass because she had asked me to save them. We were often late for school when it rained.

Roommates all our young lives with temporary breaks in that covenant as we started to walk with confidence down different paths. Yes, we were apart for years at a time, but I always felt her beside me through our adventures of young parenthood, struggles with teenagers, with ageing, and with death and disease.

She fretted and wept on the phone as she confided in me that she thought she was losing her mind. She had started getting lost in her own city, then in her own neighbourhood, and now in her own home. We talked through the scares, the fears and then one day sobbed together over the phone, as she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, a disease we were all too familiar with. A gut wrenching understanding of what the next few years would hold, a fear of losing what we knew to be reality, and the cold emptiness of the loss and loneliness to come. We wept, miles and miles apart that day, but somehow in each other’s arms and in each other’s heart.

My world is crumbling and she is so far away from me now.