It's been 47 days and 57 minutes since my heart shattered into a million pieces of silence. It's been 6.5 weeks since my Divine, kind, peaceful, brave and beautiful super hero of a baby sister peacefully and tragically took her last breath and gained her angel wings. 27 years old...TWENTY SEVEN. I still lose my breath every time I think it, write it, or say it out loud. It can't be real. It's my worst nightmare. It's the worst punishment I've ever received. It's like a bad dream you can't wake up from. It's real. It's my life. It's part of my journey and my world will never be as full without her in it.Aside from proudly participating in Robbie's service, Team Robbie website, and Eulogy (God I hate that word) I really haven't shared much about this experience and all we've gone through publicly on this blog. I'm not quite sure why, since aside from being the Mama of my beautiful little girl, my one real passion in life is writing and more specifically being brave enough to be publicly vulnerable and share my own experiences in the hopes of helping others feel not so alone in theirs. It's funny how alone we all feel when we go through struggles, when in reality so many people struggle behind closed doors and in silence. I CHOOSE not to be silent. I choose to show the world that sometimes the people you least expect are the ones struggling the most.
To say I loved my baby sister would be a complete injustice to what we had. I absolutely adored the beautiful human being she was. Every day, I appreciated the fact that she was MY sister. But not just my sister, my best friend, my reminder of what kindness truly is, my laughter when I was sad, my lecture when I needed one, my grocery shopping partner, my wisdom, my person I text the minute anything good happened or called the minute anything bad happened. She was the person I wanted to leave my little girl to if anything ever happened to me (and lets face it, I was FOR SURE going long before healthy, beautiful Robbie ever would since my eating disorder had ravished my body for all of those years...my oh my how wrong the world can be.) From the age of 6 she became an Auntie...and she was an extraordinary hands on, Auntie and second Mama to each and every one of both mine and my sisters kids.
When Robbie was 6 years old, I was an insecure, sad 17 year old girl with a raging, growing out of control eating disorder that ruled my life and tormented my body and my mind every second of every day. Robbie was the innocent, loving little sister who never saw the bad but always bravely, unconditionally loved me through every step of my 10 year battle. She was full of smiles, and snuggles and cuddles. She would always rub my back and bring me what I needed. She was the queen of singing and make overs. She wanted so desperately to be "old" like me, 11 years her senior. She would stick by my side 24/7 if given the chance and she drove me and all of my high school friends a little crazy, but god she was cute and even they fell in love with her. She was one of three people in the delivery room with me for the birth of my daughter. She lived with my ex husband and I when Anabella was just a baby and was able to build such a close and special bond with my little girl. She was so humble and full of love and kindness right from the minute she was born and right until the minute she died.
Holy crap. My sister died. MY SISTER DIED. I AM SO FUCKING ANGRY that my sister is dead. We can sugar coat it and say she's earned her wings and gone to heaven and moved onto a better world and she was one of the "good ones" because god takes all the "good ones first". But reality is, my baby sister and my best friend suffered and fought the brutal death demon called Cancer for 7 torturous months before she deteriorated to a state that no living creature deserved to be in, never complained once, and gracefully took her last breath surrounded by my entire family, her long time love, and a couple of close friends. My arms were around her and my cheek was on hers, my hand was running through her hair like she always loved for me to do (I miss her doing it to me already) and I was whispering in her ear about how beautiful the light was when she got goosebumps up her arm and she took her last breath in and never exhaled back out.
I go in and out of shock and disbelief to complete disassociation and denial to utter earth shattering anger. I literally feel like I'm living in a fog. When I disassociate my eyes will literally glaze over and although I look present, I am fully absent. So absent I've been advised to avoid driving as much as possible until we can get this under control. Most people I'm sure would be so ashamed to admit this, but really, is there a proper way to grieve the loss of your sister, best friend and super hero? Do you know the easy 10 steps? Because right now it takes just about everything in me to breath and eat, let alone do one other thing.
After Robbie passed (at home in her own bed) my daughter, my two little nieces and I all went in together and sat with Auntie Robbie and held her hand and hugged her and we talked about how much we all love Auntie Robbie and how she will always be with us. We each took a turn talking about all the things Auntie Robbie had taught us and how sad we were. We each kissed her "goodnight" and after that was done, just Anabella and I stayed with her, laid beside Auntie Robbie holding each other and sang "You are my Sunshine" to our super hero one last time, just the way she loved and did for Anabella as a baby and just like we know she would have done for us. For the record, my amazing little girl has been nothing but astonishing throughout this entire illness and now death. She sees a counsellor and has an amazing support network, all of whom have praised us for whatever we've done with her. She is at peace and adjusted and accepting of death. She believes in heaven and she believes her Auntie is an Angel watching over her. We talk to Auntie Robbie all the time and we laugh and smile when we hear a song that reminds us of her...because that's the way Auntie Robbie would want it. We have had to face death much sooner than we would have wanted to with her, but we have raised her full of love and taught her to love hard, and when you lose someone you love, you have to still love and lose hard too.
What allot of people don't realize is that throughout her sickness Robbie at times only wanted me and our older sister. She would find great comfort when it was just the 3 of us. And from the minute she was diagnosed we promised her she would never fight this battle for one single second alone. To us that meant even after death. When the coroner came to take her body to the funeral home, we walked her body to the van. The next day we went and checked on her and planned her service and cremation. The day after that, my sister, my 21 year old niece and I picked out her favorite pajamas, walked into the funeral home, personally and respectfully dressed her lifeless body, put on her make up, did her hair, wrapped her in a warm blanket (that we had all loved and shared over time) and lifted her earthly body into her casket. The following day we filled her casket with love letters from our family, kissed her goodbye for a final time and wheeled her casket from the funeral home to the Hearst. We lead a procession and followed the Hearst carrying her body to the Crematorium at which point we had an impromptu personal service with close family and best friends holding hands and hearts around her casket ending with my devastated Dad, older sister and me personally walking and pushin her casket into the fiery heat that would be the end of her body's existence on this earth. That body wasn't her. But her spirit was alive and well that day. We promised her she would never be alone in her battle and journey, and we stayed true to our promise.
The following two weeks were a blur of her funeral, Christmas, New Years and to make it all complete the man I thought was the actual love of my life, that I truly believed was my best friend and the person I wanted to be with, who asked me to try on engagement rings, who then went out and bought the engagement ring and wedding band, who asked us to move in with him and who I gave my notice on my condo for, ended our relationship the day before New Years Eve because he couldn't handle my "emotional ups and downs", "I was being selfish and needed to get over my sisters death and get on with life" and "he didn't have the tools to deal with my grief". Then he stopped having any communication with us and refused to even hug me goodbye. I'd like to say that was devastating...and it was for a little while, but I was quickly reminded that I should instead be happy that I dodged a bullet. I've learned that when tragedy strikes you realize quickly who your true friends are and when one door closes another door opens. Life works in funny ways, and I am now strangely perfectly ok with "his" decision to end our relationship. I need someone VERY different than that, and he clearly needed someone very different than me...although I'm not sure an emotionless woman who could move on from her sisters death after three weeks exists out there. If she does, I don't EVER want her for a friend, let alone girlfriend;-) I wish him happiness...and maybe a little bit of Karma? Come oooooon, I'm human.
Needless to say...I'm in grief therapy. I'm not working. I've banged my new truck up twice. I'm not sleeping. I can't get the visions, the feelings, the smells, the sounds, the feeling of her lifeless body in my arms, the heat of the crematorium, the heat waves coming out of the crematorium chimney, the panic, the earth shattering pain in my heart...any of it, out of my head. I have constant nightmares about everything under the sun including my living sister and I. As if losing Robbie wasn't punishment enough, now I get to go through this living nightmare to somehow "get stronger" and come to grips with all I've gone through. I'm told this is all very traumatic and grief is difficult, especially the loss of a younger, close sibling. My newest learning: It's called "complicated grief" and the hopes is that it won't turn into PTSD if it hasn't already. I guess my therapist will fill me in tomorrow at my next appointment.
Wish me luck. Don't judge me. Send me love. Don't feel sorry for me. Be grateful that my life can hopefully someday help you with your own in some little way. Even if it means that you look past sweating some of the small stuff that happens today and sit down and call your sister or your brother or your best friend or your Mama. Take that minute to talk to and hear the voice of that person you have in your life that you just assume will always be there. They might not be tomorrow. Love,
Jess
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