My sister, without her, I will always be incomplete

I am sitting here crying. Reliving or more to the point feeling the deep, soulful loss of my sister. My heart aches, my brain feels like it in a vice and I feel like I want to jump out of my skin to get away from myself. I feel a desperate need to have my sister hold me. Protect me. Take care of me. Tell me everything will be alright. She was and will always be my —– I cannot find the words to describe what she means to me and how deep I feel the loss.

It has been more than 8 years and I feel the loss as severely now as I did then.

When I was six my father died. It was not a tragic loss to me than or now, as I did not know him well. He had been sick with lung cancer since I was two. In and out of hospitals, requiring my mother to go to work. Thus, I lost many of my years with my mother.

While my grandmother had administrative responsibility for taking care of me and my younger sister. My older sister, Kathy, raised me. Gave me love, tenderness and a presence in my life that gave me —– again the words will not come. But, let me try.

• balance

• center

• stabilizing force

• shield from myself

• physical closeness with emotional solidarity

• reflection of the deepest part of myself

• my soul

I know I am missing some part of me. I am missing something from my life. More so, as I know in my logical mind, that part I am missing I will never fill again.

Losing my dad was like missing a meal. I was hungry, but too young to understand how starving I would become. Losing my sister, was like having a physical part of me riped out and reliving it several times a year. Than with my mom’s illness I was able to get close to her after so many years and than she passes. The small part of the missing part that seemed to be filled with connecting my mom, gone in a flash of a heart attack.

Than I was alone. Still alone now. In a way if feels like I am falling with nothing to grab hold of and knowing there is no one to catch me. The fall is slow, constant. The darkness below deepens as my fear and loneliness increases.

I am deep into this fall, but not quite at the bottom. I will not go splat, but be absorbed by the darkness. I fear that the most.