Sometimes life kicks you in the hiney

I haven’t updated in a while, I know. This past week has been hectic in many ways, but most of them seem trivial now. My sister has been diagnosed with cancer. She’s 27 years old and has a husband and two small boys. The news has hit me right in my heart, like a blunt object. When I was at the hospital that first night and she was still asleep from the surgery and all we could do was talk to her and stare at her and wonder if she could hear us (and yes, she could) and wonder how she would react to the news, I watched a nurse come in and adjust her machines and stuff and take her temperature and I was immediately a three-year-old again, watching that nurse with the huge red-lipped smile holding up my tiny, screaming, red-faced newborn baby sister so I could see her. I remember banging on the nursery window and yelling at the lady to put my sister down. Obviously, she was hurting her or she wouldn’t have been crying, right? I was reminded of all the times I felt protective of my sister. The time in high school when I wanted to smash a boy’s face in for spreading rumors about her, and most of all, all those times I was mean to her as kids. Especially that time she hid my Barbies and I was so mad I wanted to take a baseball bat to the door on the bathroom, where she had locked herself in. The time I was up on a pole and accidentally kicked her in the ear when I was like seven years old. I still remember getting in trouble for that. But then I remember all the good times, too. Laughing at night when we were supposed to be sleeping in our bunk beds. Me, leaning over, whispering her name because I KNEW it irritated her. The time I was talking in my sleep and she laughed at me when I told her to be quiet because “I’m on the phone!”

I can honestly say that if I could take the cancer from her and bear it myself, I would. She’s my little sister, you know? I feel helpless, not knowing what to do. I do have a pretty good idea of what NOT to do and say, though, because I know my sister and I know what gets on her nerves, and I also know that even a cancer diagnosis is not going to miraculously change her personality. I know that she wants to hear the truth, not some sugar-coated fluffy answers, and most of all, I know that she’ll get through this. She’ll kick cancer’s butt and not think twice about it. It’s just a matter of time.