If you’ve been following along you know this post was actually written 10/03. Thanks for joining me so far while I participate in blogtober and vlogtober during a really busy and emotionally draining time.
Celebrating My Sister’s Life
How can I sum up the way I feel about my sister with a few words and even fewer minutes -without breaking down? I’ve never been too emotional but this situation makes me feel like I can’t get a grip. How can I speak of her highly without talking about the lows? The circumstances that’ve bought us here today? I don’t know but, I’ll try.
My earliest memories all include my baby sister- bathing together, shaving off her eyebrow, putting gum in her hair. As far back as I can remember, I remember my sister. My darkest and most painful memories include my sister; for instance staying up all night in a hotel room waiting for our mom -who would never come back. Tiera never knew it but seeing how she took that loss made me who and what I’ve always been “strong” – not for me but for her.
I remember comforting her as she broke down and cried for what seemed like forever in mine and Anthonys arms. In those moments being there for her became the most important thing to me. She was my baby sister and I wanted to love her and protect her from any pain forever. I decided she could be the sad one and I would be the strong one -her shoulder to lean on and that’s how we’d get through life. She could be as emotional as she wanted to be about anything and trust me, she was very emotional and I would always be there to see her through. Sometimes we would get into it because I wanted her to harden up a bit and not let the world get her down. But she always seemed to have a hard time seeing the brighter side of things.
I never did -my bright side has always been that I had my sister.
Losing our mom? Atleast I have my sister. Losing our grandma Lena? Atleast I have my sister. When our oldest brother Darryl died I still thought atleast I have Tiera. Throughout losing friends and so many people in our family the one thing that helped me deal with it al was her right next to me dealing with it too. When Lee died, I cried but not as much out of saddness as being truly more thankful than you could ever know that atleast I STILL had my sister.
But now I’m standing here without my bright side, the person I’ve always been strong for. I don’t feel strong anymore. I feel a depth of sadness I couldn’t possibly translate into words – only in tears and sleepless nights. I spend so much time reminiscing on our past and longing for the future I thought we’d get to have.
At some point I began to have a constant worry that one day something might happen to her.. Mostly due to all the things we’d seen happen in life and the way she had started living hers. I checked her location every single morning. Sometimes several times a day just looking to see ‘where is my sister’ is she where she’s supposed to be? Is she someplace safe? Once while I was living in Georgia she wasn’t answering my calls or texts but I could see she was home. By the second day I called our Uncle Keith. I asked him to go by and check on her because I was scared. So, he goes over there and kicks down the door since she wasn’t responding to it. She was so pissed because nothing was wrong, she was just in a mood and didn’t want to be bothered.
But I told her “girl I worry about you EVERYDAY you can’t ignore me. It doesn’t matter where I am, I’m going to check to make sure you’re okay so answer me!” Even on the day we lost her I was checking her location. It said she was home but I had a growing concern because I could see her battery life dying and she wasn’t responding. Uncle Nick and I decided that we couldn’t just ignore it, so he went there and he found her. But this time she wasn’t in a mood, she was gone.
Tiera would always tell me how much she loved me, how the one thing she always wanted was to never lose me. But the one thing I always wanted was to KNOW for certain that my sister was okay.
In the end we both got our wishes, she never always me and I finally know that she’s okay.