Happy Birthday, Sister

“The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.” ~Seneca

It’s still a vivid memory. The first time I saw my sister, it was through the nursery glass at the hospital. I was wearing my “I’m a big sister” shirt, and Kim, my new baby sister, was screaming, red in the face. I remember thinking that the nurse with the too-bright red lipstick grinning at me from behind the nursery window must have been hurting my baby sister as she held her up for me to see. And it made me angry. Of course, I know now that she wasn’t, but from that day on, I felt that same sense of protectiveness every time I was in Kim’s hospital room. And over the last three years, I sat at her bedside in a hospital room way more times than either of us could have ever expected. Most of the time, there were other people in the room, usually my parents. But there were moments when it was just the two of us, sisters, lifelong best friends, companions, confidants (like the Golden Girls, only with less grey hair and wrinkles!). Depending how she was feeling, Kim and I would either talk (she’d fill me in on which nurses she was mad at and wanted to shank with a sharpened toothbrush), watch TV (you can find some very odd things on cable television), or I’d just sit in her room while she dozed in and out (sometimes doing what we called “the Deedo sleep,” mouth hanging wide open, just like our grandfather, Deedo, did when he fell asleep in his recliner). She always apologized when she woke up, but I always told her, “Hey, I came to see you, so I’m the one who has to be good company, not you, but you were doing the Deedo sleep.” She always laughed at that, and after Deedo passed away last November, the mention of the Deedo sleep always led to reminiscences of him; how Kim always offered to shine his head for a quarter and how we poked fun at him relentlessly when we found out his middle name was Marion.

Kim was well-known for her hospital goodie bags, and if you were ever on the receiving end of one of those goodie bags, you know exactly what I’m talking about, and most likely, you ended up putting one together just for her, too. They always contained candy (lots and lots of random candy), gum (which she rarely ever chewed in front of other people), disposable toothbrushes, small silly toys that she put in there just for a laugh, chapstick (the goofier the flavor, the better, and she always gave me one with a Disney princess on it, so I did the same for her), and fuzzy socks (again, the goofier/weirder, the better, and I still have the knee socks she painted for me when I gave birth to David, complete with toenail polish and an ankle bracelet, with the words “It’s a BOY” painted on the bottoms). And I always included a new coloring book and a brand new package of crayons, since that’s what we got when we were sick as kids. Kim’s goodie bags to me, like every present she ever gave me, was packaged with copious amounts of tape. It was her trademark. I knew it was going to be good if I had a hard time getting it open. :) (See here, and then watch this video.)

Kim was also well-known for her sense of humor, particularly in the face of adversity. Since Kim’s colon cancer diagnosis after her surgery in which doctors removed part of her colon, potty humor became a fixture: poop jokes, colon jokes, fart jokes. And then there were the scar jokes. Kim told me one time, talking about all the surgeries she’d had, “I’m going to look like a freakin’ connect the dots puzzle!” She was able to laugh at herself and her situation, and I’m sure many people didn’t quite get how we could make jokes out of things like cancer. But our family has always been that way, as long as I can remember, finding the humor in any situation (and yes, sometimes inappropriately so... she made me laugh way too many times in church). You have to be able to laugh – otherwise, the grief can be too much to bear and can overwhelm you. Mark Twain said that “Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.” And that’s the truth. Kim’s sunny spirit was an amazing legacy.

Despite her fight with cancer, and in the midst of all her treatments and surgeries, how many of you can recall Kim asking “Why?” I can only think of a very few times we ever discussed it, and her question was not “Poor me, why is this happening to me?” She wanted to know “How do we fight this?” And I’ll be completely honest here, even though I know some of you are going to think this is silly. Kim’s ready acceptance of her situation and willingness to fight for her life, knowing from day one that the odds were highly stacked in cancer’s favor and not hers, came from a place of security, because as a child, Kim asked God’s forgiveness from her sins and had accepted His gift of salvation from hell. She knew that no matter what happened, if she died soon or lived another 30 years, her place in Heaven was secured. Faith in God changes the way we think and the way we see the world and our place in it. As heart wrenching as it is to know that my baby sister does not live in this world any more, and that I will never again be able to call her whenever I feel like it or send her a random goofy text in the middle of the night, or sit with her and giggle about something silly, I KNOW and fully believe in my heart and in my mind that I will see her again someday, but in a place that is so much better than either of us could have ever dreamed. Because I, too, have the hope of salvation and the security of knowing that my faith and my very essence lies in God’s hands. Sometimes it’s hard to put all of our burdens on Him and let Him take care of things, but the longer I live and the more struggles and hardships that I go through, the more I am realizing that He will do exactly that. He will help us go through the hard times with a strength we didn’t know we possessed... because we don’t. It all comes from Him and His grace. If you knew Kim very well at all, you know what a strong person she was and how amazing it was to see her spirit and vitality, even until the end.

And what an end it was. She knew it was coming, probably days before. She knew it was the end, and even while she retained a bit of stubbornness and hope, not really wanting to believe it, she accepted it. Her concern was never for herself, because she was secure in her faith. Her main concern was how her death would affect her family: her two little boys, Seth and Sean, and her husband, Will. My brother-in-law loved my sister so much, and you could see it when they were together. Kim never wanted him to have to go through that kind of pain and did everything she could to make it easier for him. It’s hard to watch someone struggle and feel helpless, knowing that there’s nothing you can do to fix it. That takes a toll on anyone, but most especially, one’s life partner. Those last few days in the hospital were horrible for all of us, knowing what was coming and being unable to stop it. I will always cherish that last smile I saw from her around her ventilation tube (I had told her that Mother and Daddy stopped for donuts and didn’t bring me any, and she smiled, most likely wanting to say “Haha, you don’t get any donuts!” if I know Kim). Kim was a part of my life from the moment she was born, and I was there to witness the moment she left. “Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.” ~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. It was amazing to witness... one moment, she was there with us, her spirit and determination shining, even with the medications and even while she was fighting to breathe, and the next moment, literally in the blink of an eye, her star winked out and she was gone. It was exactly noon (with the second hand and everything, it was amazing) on April 6, 2011. I don’t know if I can describe it any better than that, but I will always remember that I was there to see her off, and I was standing at the foot of her bed, looking at her face in the moment she took her last breath. The sense of my loss was tempered by the sense of relief I felt, witnessing the cessation of her pain and struggle.

So today, on what would have been her 31st birthday, while I wear the pair of Converse I inherited from Kim and drink a huge Dr Pepper in her memory, I shall cherish those good memories of her, and hold on to them, pulling them out any time the grief starts to weigh heavily.

And I know we all have good memories of Kim – funny memories, sweet things she did for you, things she gave you, impressions she left in your life, lessons you learned from her. If you’d like to email me some of them, that would be awesome! I am planning to put together a book for my nephews, Seth and Sean, and I’d love to include your memories and stories, even photos, if you have some (and I know you do, Kim was quite photogenic and not camera-shy at all). Reply to this post and let me know you’d like to contribute, and I’ll send you my email address, or if we’re Facebook friends, message me there.