It’s about this time of year that I look for her even more often. It is the season of the long sunny days and twinkly black-night skies. It is the season of the dragonfly. Whenever I see my first dragonfly of the year, I am awake and aware that her time is coming back around. I remain heightened by the signs that slip through the portal, the nods to an alternative hemisphere that some of us believe in.
I feel most sensitive to emotion when I think about her this time of year — I miss her all over again in a very raw state, as if it were only a few short months away and counting, and not the 7 whole years it actually is; 7 years is a long time. I was 7 when she was born, so I had already lived 7 years before she came into my life. Now she has been gone 7 years of my life, I can’t imagine how I lived those early 7 years without her. She was such a bright light that, surely, we should have known of her pending arrival before it happened, as it were.
The portal dreams I have about her see me crossing the portal in a time-travel way where I find her in various exotic places, often eating and drinking (how surprising) but always as her younger self. I see her here on this planet as a delightful shooting star at night, a butterfly in the early morning, a hummingbird of an afternoon and a dragonfly whenever one crosses my path. This year it was an electric blue one that flashed past me in our secret garden. “Oh hello, Madame, it’s about time,” I commented rather rudely and then noticed that she promptly returned with a flashy blue boyfriend, so I must not have offended her too much.
Friends across the world tell me when they see their first dragonfly of the summer. “She was visiting my pool,” says one. “In her finest bright red gown,” (my favorite). “She was crossing the road in front of me,” says another. “I had to brake to avoid her!” (Typically distracted by other things.)
The memories start popping up on social media of her last few days on the planet. Our last goodbye, her farewell to friends, her final goodbyes at home with her beloveds. It is easier to process goodbyes 7 years down the road. You see the decline of each day that passed when her strength was being sucked from her, the inevitability of what was coming, soon — very soon — how soon — when, at the time, it was all a painful mesh of lost hope.
I find myself picking up the book I wrote about her life and death, “The Rose Bud & Her Brilliant Adventures” — I haven’t read it since I published it in 2022, but I just printed a second edition, so perhaps it is time to revisit the tome that took me so long to complete and gave me such agony and ultimately healing along the way. When I finally completed it, I was exhausted and satiated. Now I’m curious as to whether it’s as good as I remember it. We shall see. Time has a way of easing the perspective. I leaf through some of the last pages….
Grains of time
I’d watch her sleeping on her back. Peaceful, still, like a shroud. She is still breathing though, lightly. I study her chest moving up and down — tiny, smooth breaths. I quietly move, trying not to wake her. But just like forever, my movement provokes one eye to open and a smile to spread across her tiny, pale face. Stairs are now a problem, breathlessness. Swelling from the steroids, swollen stomach, gas, irritation. Difficulties with the bowels, as ever. I see her body struggling now as never before….
We go to the hospital, and the brain tumor is zapped, though, ironically, the tumor is the least of her current issues. We talk to her oncologist, and they are wondering what they can do for her, while there is a little time left. Is there any time left? Her liver levels are up. They will not give her chemo under those conditions. Without chemo, yes, she knows, her time will run out. I take her home and, immediately, she feels better. She is at peace….
She wants to go to the sea and walk down the beach. She can no longer swim, but she can float with her noodle, and she is happy with that. It’s enough to be in the clear blue warm waters of her home. She is calm. We spend hours in the warm azures of the Mediterranean, so happy in those moments, watching the silver twinkles on the water and the changing moods of the sky. She can sleep on the beach there, as much as she sleeps anywhere. I watch her from the sea, lying on the sun lounger, and I wonder if she is still breathing. I wonder that a lot these days. If she stopped breathing right there in the sun lounger on the beach near the water that she loves, then she would die happy. It is there that we find ourselves these days. This is a magical spot and always will be. I tell her I want to bring my granddaughter here one day. She smiles….
She shows me where Ali’s daughter and father are buried and where she will be too, before sundown on the day she passes. “You won’t make it, sis”, she tells me, reading my mind. A surreal conversation that you should always have, like it or not, when time is so short. And her time here is now limited, we know that. How limited though?
I am leaving her again. It’s 3.30am when my cab arrives and, this time, she gives me two hugs. As usual, she has made me my cup of coffee, as she always does when I am staying. Her tiny frame is so fragile I hold her gently, as if she might break. I do feel as if this will be the last time I hug her in person. “I don’t want people rushing to my death bed,” she tells me. “Just sitting there watching me pass away … ugh!” The sand is running out on the timer; there are only grains left. Don’t waste it, don’t waste it. There’s not much left.
I’m home and she is back in the hospital. Things seem to be failing, body parts are worn. The liver isn’t working properly, the bowels either. And let’s not even get started on the brain tumor. The issues seem to be growing and multiplying, compounding problems cascading swiftly on the downhill slope. They put her on a drip — a deep cleanse of the liver. No food or drink for a few days. She is woozy, dry-mouthed, tired. I wonder, if I were in her hospital room now, would I see her short breaths ease and stop? Why do I keep thinking that? Something in the human condition is preparing me, I’m sure of it….
She arrives home after her marathon drip week in hospital. She craves watermelon. They have the best melons there. In the sunset light of her terrace, her skin is no longer grey, but bronze once more. She is home. A few more grains are added back into the timer. Bonus time. But how much more time?
Rosie, my baby sister, died on July 25, 2018, in exactly the place she wanted to be. The second edition of “The Rosebud & Her Brilliant Adventures” is available at Amazon.com and at River Books in Carmel.
