old smoke and mirrors

I don't think it is a secret.  And if it is I don't hide it well.  Most people who interact with me on any regular basis can see it.  Something grey around me, a rail-thin line of smoke from a dead fire. Flames that long ago extinguished themselves; ashes to ashes.

Yes, it is true, once upon a time, my life burned to the ground and you if sniff around me you can still smell it.

It was my sister.  Our middle sister. Her life, her death. It's a long story one which I don't know if I can tell any more. The memory of that time and space is a closed attic room.  Perfectly preserved yet nearly forgotten.

The air up there is musty and full of dust. If I think quietly about it I see the things that burned the hottest; the fan in her apartment window, her comforter in the tub, the smell of her blooded baked onto the floor. The radio. The mug. The lingering smell of her body. The color of her skin. The contents of her stomach. The photo of her children.

When my sister died I lost who I was.  She had been my sister, my best friend, my worse nightmare, my whole childhood, and in many ways my own child.  I loved her and I hated her.  Untreated mental health issues turned into an addiction. The addiction turned her into something not entirely human and hard to love but hard to give up on.

It makes sense in hindsight that the TA for the cadaver lab who ID her sister's 4-day rotting in the July heat body, flesh falling off her face where she had fallen, the one who cleaned the apartment stepping over the blood-smeared floor and chunks of her sister's hair, had a complete mental break down. Not metaphorically but literally.

The lapses were small at first typical trauma and the nightmares.  Then everyday objects began taking on new meanings like wood chips, flies, the phone ringing... and then it got even worse. I started seeing things.  I started seeing her. I somehow came to believe her finger was in our vacuum and I refused to use it.  I was terrified she was mad at me for taking all her stuff, most of which I donated to a women's' shelter. I was sleepless and yet I was never fully awake... for years.

The person I was before and the person I am now are not the same. Not even remotely.

The before Me was headed to medical school. The before Me spent 18 hours a day surrounded by the chaos that is carousal of life in the Pre-Med theater and never wanted it to end.

The Me of now barely tolerates the 5-hour shifts at the gym. However, the Me of now is a far better person than the Me of before. Kinder, softer, more aware.

My sister's death pulled me down so far the world outside my head stopped spinning.  Any life that comes to a crashing halt leaves casualties in its wake.

I remember the silence.  I remember looking out at the world from far away. I remember the nightmares, the hallucinations, the weight of not knowing what the dead knew.  The sadness that she died alone and for days no one knew. The guilt.  The irrational fear.  The questions.

The life I rebuild was not my design- it was Beach's.  She was 3 years old when my sister Wendi died.  As the months passed I slowly pulled her and me from the outside world.  I pulled her from the pre-k at the U.  I withdrew from all my classes and gave up my research position. By winter I had us in total isolation.  I remember little to nothing about that time except for her little voice telling me she wanted "us" to go back to school.

By the following Fall, she had managed to guilt me into enrolling her in a cooperative nursery school.  Without my grants and stipends, we couldn't afford it.  So I wrote a letter and she was awarded the first full-ride scholarship they have ever given.  By Winter term I was their first ever paid Director.

She was the one who returned us to society. This is one of the many reasons why my life is built around hers.  I never intended to return.  She gave me no choice.

In many ways I am lucky.  I already surrendered.  Everything on this side of it is extra.  I see life as extremely bittersweet.  The beauty in sadness is there is always contrast.

A loss means you had something to lose in the first place.

I won't pretend that I am completely recovered. When the phone rings there is still a small part of me that thinks it might be her.  I don't feel like she could have died, that doesn't seem possible. That can't of happened to her.  Maybe she was never real.

There are still nights when I have to switch BC sides of the bed because I am afraid she lies in wait for me. I have triggers: flies, fans, smells, red nail polish, white mountain bikes, a certain beer...

It wasn't until just this year that I looked a Beach and saw something I had never seen before.  She actually reminds me of my sister.  My sister is the one person I most fear my children (and her's) becoming.  But Beach seems to reflect the best of her, or at least what she could have been.

She too had been a gymnast. It is the little things mostly, the eyeliner, the lean build, the scrunchies on her wrist, the way she stands, the way she dresses, the big hair.

The last time I ever spoke to my sister was on a Monday the last week of July.  I don't remember much of what was said but I do recall her telling me she didn't want to die. That she was going to stop drinking and I laughed at her.  I laughed.

Someone in her building saw her on Tuesday and then nothing until on Friday the landlord responding to complaints about the smell found her dead in her bathroom.  He called the police and the police called my parents. Who in turn called me.

The moment I was told is a fault line that divides my life: before and after. Some of it was and is awful but some of it is sweeter than I thought life could ever be.

Death is part of living.  And to be honest not everyone is as lucky as me. Death gave me a chance to start over- in a natural disaster sort of way.

Slowly.  So slowly.

For better and worse, I will never be who I was before. I'm not sure how much I trust myself. I prefer to be alone for long stretches.  Being surrounded overwhelms me. I still hold things in my head I can't say out loud. I live with a level of anxiety that would surprise you all.

But the person I am, the one that I returned to the world as, was driving the canyon road on Tuesday afternoon.  The road that my sister used to drive.

Beach was my passenger, her window slightly down.  Summer was pressing in and the world around us was a swirl of gold and yellows and slow-moving semi trucks.

"Mom, if I died today I would be okay with that. I have had a good life. I think it is because I am happy- does that sound stupid? It's not that there aren't things I want to do it's just that I have done a lot in my life already. Even if I died tragically my life would not have been tragic. My life is good."

The Me from before never could have raised a child like this one. The Me from before would have been too busy to be there.

The Me before death came into my life didn't know how important the little moments are.

The person I am today tightened her grip on the steering wheel and doubled checked her mirrors because that Me knows how fragile life can be.