Sad Travelogues

Mid-morning on Tuesday I was told my sister was dying. I was in my bedroom and the east and south were filled with sunlight. We are, if you're not ln Bloomington, having a week of lovely sunshine. Spring has not come early to us, and usually it comes with rain rain rain. This year, it's moved from cold to cool to cool and dry. I had ignored my Ipad all morning, and was in the bedroom retrieving it when I saw the message from my niece.

I had just had a conversation with Charles about how much I wanted to see my sister before I left for San Francisco this Saturday--but doubted I could drive. My right leg, vastly improved, is still a bit stiff and still appreciates being elevated more than pushing on an accelerator, not just for 2 miles around town, 60 miles to Indy but certainly more than 198 miles to Warsaw.

But who thinks when you look outside and it's sharp enough to hurt your eyes--the trees have no leaves to filter the light, and colors are all washed out, nothing absorbs the edge of the white-yellow sunlight; too, nothing takes the harshness of those words--my mother, your sister, my wife, is dying. Hospice says it may be now or never.

I rented an Optima, because I was afraid a Versa could not go fast enough. I proceeded to load that car. A humidity machine, a suction unit, drugs, food, clothes, drugs, supplies to address the possibilities, things for when other things go wrong, my panda pillow given to me in the hospital by Katie and Oner...it goes everywhere because my rump has so little padding these days.

My sister is the oldest in the family, I am the youngest. She had turned 14 the month before I was born, so I was simply an inconvenience, another one, the fifth. My memories of her as a child are sketchy, but there is one profound remembrance that I can't hold back. Matt and I, 6 and 4 at the time, took Barb's prom dress, a perfect beautiful piece of 60's couture, and we each put it on and ran around the yard in it. It was likely a typical Northern Indiana Spring in 1964, likely damp, and how the dress faired I can't say exactly--all I remember was the delightful freak out.

On November 20, 1966, my sister got married on my 6th birthday. I've gotten a lot of traction out of this for many years, a lot of howling and claims of emotional damage--and perhaps that IS what's wrong with me, it's possible. I was a ring bearer in a white jacket and snow fell, and to this day when it snows on my birthday I feel lucky, and chosen.

My sister has two daughters and 11 grandchildren and she has been married to Dale for 46 years. She has been a housewife, a continuing education student, and a librarian. She loved working at the library so much that even when she had lost 2/3rds of her body weight and could not chew, that's where she most wanted to be--and she only retired just prior to her last surgery, the one that was pitched to her as "this or hospice." Now there is hospice anyway.

I'd like to say that my sister will live but she won't--technically, none of us will We will find our eventuality and eventually, someone will get the call or text about us too. I would like you to know not that my sister was happy--I think she is and has been--but that she has lead a life that was both normal and exceptional like many of us.

Especially lately, as she has suffered through the end game of mouth and neck cancer, she has inspired me--so right now, I'm taking this poorly, and I know it. I do not know what to do with myself, I cannot tell how I should act. I'm just not at home in my own emotions, with my sister dying too young, and too early, when I have so many things to ask her about how I manage this cancer, how I do as well as she did, how I face it when it returns, how I refuse to give up. She could tell me all these things, but right now, she's too busy trying to stay alive, and failing.

I proved that I could drive myself for 3 hours and survive. Hooray for me. I proved that I could stand up to another blow of stress and deal well enough that no one knows how utterly at sea I am. I have one sister. My oldest brother, one year younger, is getting older. My other brother is your garden variety homophobe taught by a lesser god that he's a greater being...so I am losing yet again. Something that means more than my tongue or a goddamn hamburger or the speed at which I'm recovering--I'm losing a reason that recovery has been so sweet.

I want them to be wrong, but having held her hand this afternoon while her body refused food, I want them to be right in the best possible way. That my sister, with all the dignity she can attract, march off to the light in the corner of the room, going wherever we go, and finding a library there that needs a dedicated worker.

Barbara Price Hudson, sorry about that prom dress, ok?