I’ve been struggling for weeks to write this post. Struggling to accept a new reality.

My sister died. There is a hole in my life now.

I was only 14 months old when my she was born, so I have no memories of my life before she was a part of it. In fact, most of my earliest memories are little vignettes of my sister and I together:

In the back seat of one of our family cars, arguing over who got to “stand on the hump.” The tunnel down the center of the car’s floor through which the drive shaft reached the rear wheels. Long before there were seat belts in cars and seat belt laws, we took turns standing on the hump, holding on to the back of the front bench seat. It was the prime spot. You could see where we were going and hear what our parents were saying. We wore holes in the carpeting over the hump on more than one of dad’s old heaps.

Same back seats, same old cars, but the two of us trying to sleep on a long trip, fighting over the blanket and legroom, crying to mom about the unfairness. And dad threatening to give us something to cry about.

Same two kids trying to sleep, maybe even the same blanket, but now in a bed we shared because our parents couldn’t afford another bed, let alone another bedroom, one of us at each end of the bed, kicking each other viciously and yanking on the blanket, crying to mom about the unfairness. And dad threatening to give us something to cry about.

We argued and fought constantly when we were littles, each of us giving as well as we got. There was love, of course, between us, and we had plenty of fun together. It was because we were always together that we fought so much. It was just the two of us. We had no other siblings, so we only had each other to share the highs and lows of life with. We only had each other to share our birthdays and Christmases and visits to grandparents with. We only had each other to take our fears and frustrations out on as well. In the early years, our parents were young and poor. We moved around a lot as they figured life out. Memories of the places we lived keep coming back to me now:

Going to the outhouse together at one of the several places we lived in Arkansas. Outhouses were scary because of the wasps that loved to build their nests there. Using pages torn from a Sears catalog to wipe our asses.

Different outhouse and different Sears catalog, this one when we were staying at our paternal grandmother’s house for a while. Two of my uncles found a black snake about five feet long inside the outhouse. My sister and I enjoyed the outhouse even less after that, especially at night. On winter nights there was no threat of snakes and wasps, it was just the long, cold walk. For those cold nights, Grandma offered the optional galvanized steel “thunder bucket” on the screened in back porch. Still cold, but you didn’t have to get dressed and put on shoes.

We lived in several different apartments in St. Louis. Most of the buildings in that part of town were two or three stories tall, with one family on each floor. We always lived on the upper floors and had to negotiate the dark and narrow and steep stairways to play in the tiny little backyards.

Playing with a puppy named Queenie our dad had surprised us with, underneath the tin shelter we lived in, in Belle Glade, Florida. It was much cooler underneath the house than inside.

Our parents settled down eventually, bought a modest single family home in Illinois. There are lots of memories from the subsequent decades as we grew up, raised our own families, and grew old. But it’s these early memories, the ones that only my sister and I shared, that hurt the worst right now. Insignificant little memories that have me struggling with the black dog. The chorus to a Bastille tune keep running through mind.

What can I say? I’m survivin’

Crawling out these sheets to see another day

I miss you sis. More than I can adequately describe.