I woke up different that day.  I had received a call in the early morning hours, and then cried myself back to sleep.  It was a call I had known for a while that would come.  No matter how prepared you think you are, you will never be ready for that call.  I got up knowing what needed to be done.  I had an hour’s drive ahead of me.  A conversation that would have to take place.  Plans that would need to be made.  I got ready while in a state of shock and disbelief.  I could not wrap my head around what my loved ones and I had been through, and what the next few days would bring for all of us.  All I wanted to do was get back in bed, and pull the covers over my head.  As the lyrics to Ray Price’s song now rang so true …..”Make the world go away.”  

I have always been partial to traveling rural highways as opposed to the ever busy interstate.  The slow and steady pace is more my speed. Slowly driving along to take the countryside in.  Maybe stop at a roadside stand selling farm fresh tomatoes, and buying some boiled peanuts for the road.  Watching the farmers till the land that would put food on our tables.  Looking at all the old farm homesteads.  Beautiful old houses that had been filled with loving and hardworking families so many years ago.  Now just faded memories filled those walls.   My grandfather had been the one to teach me how to drive.  He always put me behind the wheel whether driving on the interstate or on the slower paced back roads.  I didn’t know it at the time, but so many of the things he taught me was to prepare me for a world I would live in when he was gone.  People driving on the interstate are always in such a rush to get where they are going. I was in no rush that day.  I had traveled these roads so many times growing up and as an adult.  I could probably make the trip in my sleep.  I drove along.  Playing all my favorite old country songs.  Merle Haggard…”Going Where the Lonely Go.”  I drove along as if in a time warp.  Time stood still.  The drive I had made so many times seemed to go on forever.  Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I wished it would.  Forever stuck in that moment, and not having to confront what lay ahead.

A little more than halfway to my destination, on the outskirts of a small country town, I spotted the two graves that I always take notice of when traveling this rural road.  So close to the side of this rural highway.  I have often thought to stop, look at the dates and names of the two individuals that are resting there in peace.  At least, I hope in peace.  So near the side of the road.  What were the circumstances of their death?  Did their loved ones feel the immense void at their death that I now felt?  Why were they buried on the side of the road?  Mental note to research how long this rural highway had been in use, and possibly dig up the story behind the demise of these two souls.  I’m curious like that.

I remember being almost to where I was going when I saw the most beautiful field of sunflowers.  It was almost the middle of November, but it did not strike me as odd for sunflowers to be in full bloom that time of year.  Seeing those sunflowers standing tall gave me inspiration that I had been looking for.  My sister had always loved sunflowers.  She would have loved seeing this field full of her favorite flower.

I drove on.  Ever nearing my final destination.  My time on the highway time warp was coming to an end.  I pulled up at my mother’s home.  Got out of my car.  My legs felt like concrete.  It was all I could do to sit down on the sofa.  Trying to figure out how to say what I was there to say.  Of course, my preference is to always be direct and straightforward.  No need to sugar coat the cold hard heartbreaking truth.  I was there to tell my mother that her youngest daughter and my only sister was dead.  I sat there trying to be strong.  Hold it all together.  I wanted to scream my head off.  Punch a hole in the wall.  Raw grief that can only subside with time.  But….I had to hold it together for my mother.  I had to be strong because I was in no shape to deal with her.  For over two years, I had been by my sister’s side as she fought cancer.  I had been filling the gap for our mother while first and foremost being there as her sister. There are people that hit life head on.  Take what life throws at them. Push through the hard times.  People that do the heavy lifting that this world demands, and there are those that rely on those types of people.  Our mother is not one of the heavy lifter types, and I have come to terms with that.  That is a story for another time. I would have been by my sister’s side regardless.  I had watched how cancer, multiple surgeries, numerous hospitalizations, and chemotherapy slowly ate away at her body and strength.  However, cancer never stole her spirit, tenacity, and love of life. My beautiful and full of life baby sister.  

Circling back to the field of sunflowers I saw on the way to my mother’s house.  When I went into my mother’s house, and sat on the sofa, the first thing I really noticed was a ceramic vase with sunflowers on her table.  That was my moment of confirmation.  I had my answer.  My brother-in-law had called me again sometime in the early morning once I was on the road to the town my mother and sister lived in.  He had given me a run down of what we needed to do that day.  One thing he had said was that he wanted my mom and I to pick out the spray for my sister’s casket.  At the moment, I was still numb, and could not even believe that we were having this conversation.  I remember thinking at the time that roses were beautiful, but really would not do justice to the beautiful vibrant woman my sister had been.  Her spray would have sunflowers, day lilies, and  greenery with butterflies inserted.  She loved butterflies and sunflowers.  Ladybugs and day lilies were my favorites.

I had known this day was inevitable. I remember being so angry with my mother when she had called me one day on my lunch break from work a few months before my sister passed to tell me we needed to start thinking about what we would wear to my sister’s funeral. I had had the same thoughts, but never in a million years would I have verbalized them.  To verbalize was to make this nightmare a reality.  An inevitable part of my sister’s cancer journey.  Yet here my mom and I were, my sister barely cold, and we were having to find appropriate clothes because that’s just what you do.  Thankfully, most funerals are not as formal as they once were.  Men in full suits.  Ladies in black dresses and black shoes with stockings.  My sister and I were never ones to wear dresses.  You will be hard to find many pictures with us wearing dresses as grown women.  Now…the two of us as little girls with a grandmother that loved to dress us up is another story.  Eventually, my mother and I found outfits that we were satisfied with.  I knew the next day would involve taking my husband and our two sons shopping.  I would make sure they would be dressed to make  my sister proud.  They would end up wearing khakis, white dress shirts, and matching purple ties.  I wore a purple blouse.  Purple was one of my sister’s favorite colors.  Until that afternoon at the funeral home, I had not even thought about what my sister would wear.  Thankfully, one of her friends had picked out an outfit that was perfect.  My brain was on auto-pilot, but yet in a fog.  I know my sister’s husband and sons were the same way.  To have people step in, and help means the world. 

My brother-in-law called me when their preacher stopped by the house to discuss Mendy’s funeral.  He wanted to speak to her family.  To hear our memories.  To make my sister real at her funeral.  To tell of the love she had for her family, friends, and fur babies.  We all stood in the kitchen.  Some seated. I was standing.  Trying to hold it together.  That preacher did not have enough time for me to tell him of the memories I had of my sister.  Forty-four years as my baby sister.  How do you condense that down to a few words that would ever do justice to her?  How I, as a five year old,  playing on our front porch with all my Little Golden Books spread out on the porch (my love of books started at a very early age), and I remember praying to God.  “Please send me a little sister.”  And..he did.  She would be my only sibling.  Would this preacher be able to comprehend the bond that my sister and I had?   We had been through so many trying times together.  So many shared experiences and memories.  We were different, but yet so much alike.  Would this preacher be able to convey what a wonderful wife, mother, sister, daughter, aunt, and  friend she was?  He would be able to say in all honesty that my sister had left a legacy of love.  

We all somehow made it through visitation.  Now the funeral.  I got up that morning.  Ironed the clothes that me and my guys (my husband and sons) would wear.  I had been so busy the past few days.  Just doing what had to be done.  I remember feeling like I had been hit by a ton of bricks.  I was in the kitchen, and had a picture of my sister, mom, and I in my hand.  I told my husband that I needed to take some pictures with me to the funeral.  I don’t know if I thought I would display them or what.  I felt the tenuous binds holding me together coming undone.  I remember breaking down.  Screaming that my sister was gone.  How could this have happened?!  My little sister was gone.  No more daily phone calls.  Talking about our boys.  She also has two sons. She was going to miss her youngest son’s high school graduation.  She would miss seeing grandbabies.  She loved children. Talking about our husbands.  Sharing the latest shenanigans that our mother was up to.  Planning a road trip that we would take when she was well.  We had always been in the same book, same chapter, and in the same sentence.   All of it was gone.  I pulled myself together.  As I have always done.  I needed to be strong for our mom, my guys, and  Mendy’s guys.

Mendy’s funeral was beautiful.  The flowers, her in her casket with the beautiful spray, and the video which showed the life she had built with love and happiness.  Family and friends gathered to say one final goodbye to her.  Butterflies, another favorite of hers, were released at her graveside service.  

The road of life we all travel has many hills, valleys, curves, and rough patches.  Sometimes the road can have a pure blow out.  There can be the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.  Along the way, if we’re lucky we also experience immense love.  The part of my life’s journey that had me walking with my sister during her cancer battle brought sadness, desperation, frustration, fear, hope, denial, acceptance, and ultimately a truer understanding of how fleeting life can be. You’ve got to love hard because in the end love is all you have.

I woke up contrary to any way I had ever known the day my sister died. My vision of the world had been dimmed, and only time would slowly bring color back into my world.  Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” truly speaks to me.  My sister was solid gold.