Content warning: drug use, grief, bad dinner choices  

Yesterday I went to a public event. Two women asked about my sister because they’d seen the obituary. It made it feel more real. It was comforting and also exhausting.

(Isn’t it interesting how some people’s way of just sitting with you, their presence, their small talk that is never small to you comforts you so much more than others, though the others did nothing wrong and had the best of intentions?)

I enjoyed the event, genuinely, but when I got home, I had to sit in silence on my bed for a while. No TV. No music. Just… sitting.

Dinner was supposed to be simple. Chicken sandwiches. The chicken was already cooked; I just had to dress the sandwiches. I told my husband I couldn’t do it. I might be able to get myself a bowl of cereal, I said, but not make dinner. 

The man has already made delicious, homemade chicken pot pie twice this week for us. (He generally cooks a couple of times a year, and I am always grateful.) 

I wasn’t hinting for him to do more. I just…couldn’t get up. Except… after sitting a bit longer, I managed to get up and make us both sandwiches. He would’ve done it if I had asked. I just didn’t want to ask him to do something else. 

That may not sound like a victory, making sandwiches. But some days, that’s all you’ve got.

The anthology with my poem arrived. It’s a beautiful volume, out just in time for fall and I feel honored to have my work appear in it. My piece almost didn’t make it in because an email from the editor got buried in my spam folder, but I found it just in time.

I was afraid my poem might not be sugary enough for them until I saw the word “papercut” in the title, which honestly feels hilariously apt for one vein of my poetry.  

Maybe I should take the time to share a better photo of it, but I can’t be arsed to. Not today. Go find it on Amazon if you want a beauty shot, dear heart. 

My poem is called “Casting Spells on Scarecrows.”

I have more to say about my youngest sister. And I likely will from time to time for a while. People look at someone like Cher who struggled and maybe all they see is someone weak, someone who made bad choices. They don’t ask why she needed something to numb the pain. They don’t wonder what she was trying to escape.

They see the irrational moments, the mess, the damage, and they flatten the person down to just those fragments the way you might a “bad” character in a bad novel. They forget the rest.

But my sister was loyal. She nursed our father when he was dying, wouldn’t let anyone else but my mother near him. That meant grueling hours of sitting up with him and even more grueling tasks. Hospice care, when they were finally needed, offered to hire her after seeing her in action. 

After he passed, I gave her a thank-you card, and a jewelry box with a freshwater pearl bracelet in it, and you’d have thought I gave her a million dollars when it was just a “thank you” for doing those things that I know were soul splitting. I honestly don’t know if I could’ve done what she did. 

Likewise, my brother did tons of coordinating for my mother’s last days, taking my mom to the doctor, cooking for her, buying her special treats, etc. and even resigned from his job to take over her care, all HUGE and I owe him major thanks. He’s the best. 

But my youngest sister did the bulk of the physical care, from what I understand, when she was up to it. That’s not easy stuff. 

There was so much more to my sister. My heart can’t share it all now, but just the broad strokes to say that society has it wrong when they only see the diseased parts of someone. 

Even though I forgot to see all sides of her sometimes, I’m ashamed to say.

I guess that’s being human, but I regret now that my patience didn’t span that far. 

I’m in that space where everything feels a little raw, a little uncertain.

I’m in that “Here I am, toasting a bagel. My sister will never have another bagel,” stage. 

There are fun weekend plans on the agenda, but I feel guilty doing anything for entertainment. (Still going; it will likely do me good.)

At the family gathering this past Sunday, I said, “I want to tell you all something: I love you. I love you. I love you.” They all looked at me, and then most of them said it back. (I give the teen boys a pass, though at least one did say it.) 

That was the most beautiful moment. I turned to my cousin and said, “Because you don’t know when you won’t have a chance to say it again.” And she said, “That’s right.”

It would haunt me if I lost someone I loved and they didn’t know how deeply I cared. Loss has made me louder about that. If you don’t know I love you, then you’re not listening. 

(The squirrels must miss me. Since it’s too cold to be on the porch, I’m at the dining room table, and I hear them hurling themselves back and forth across the carport, as if to entertain me.) 

I added some dirty dishes to the dishwasher this morning. Moved some empty boxes. I plan to go to the gym this afternoon.

I might finally assemble Word Raccoon’s pink office chair that was delivered some time ago now. 

There are some poetry deadlines I’m eyeing, but I’m not feeling compelled to submit, or write anything but this today. 

Grief takes time to work through. I know that. It happens to everyone, loss, eventually, if you let yourself love someone. It’s the entrance price for loving. 

And still, some days, all you do is you make a sandwich. You write a blog post. You get through. That’s enough.