“Sadly enough, the most painful goodbyes are the ones that are left unsaid.”
Jonathan Harnisch
After she first left, I kept seeing her face for days. Couldn’t get her out of my head.
She spoke to me, too. Let me know she was with me, to guide my next steps.
Even coaxed me towards closure of the rough-edged familial ties that still existed, largely because she also had.
I counted on her to help me tend what she had known, in life, much better than I. And I told her so.
She helped me see that I could no longer expect more than that of which they were capable.
I had tried and tried.
For years.
But after her passing, I finally saw it. That I had failed not because I hadn’t given it my everything, but because they simply could not do any more than they could.
And that was enough.
And not enough, for our affections to be exchanged with reliable kindness and respect.
After she left for good, my sister’s voice ceased narrating my reveries.
But I felt confident she’d keep her promise to assist me.
Certain aspects would likely collapse under their own weight.
Like the family, who had already stopped living up to that name for most intents and purposes.
More like acquaintances, they were. Attentive to birthdays and holidays, while each of the other 365 days lay fallow.
I guessed that this bond, loosely woven as it was, might unravel now that my sister was absent, as co-recipient for these incidental tidings.
And then there were her children.
At one time, an exceedingly sweet rapport had flowed between us – that dissolved, like sugar in a cup of hot tea, when their mother left my life the first time, over a decade ago.
How are they now? Where are they now?
I knew they knew where I was.
So I would await direction from my sis.
Some souls hover within the earth ethers for days or weeks or months after crossing over.
As my mother surely did.
Even now, she drops in from time-to-time, carrying a fresh twist on a good, or even a bad, shared memory.
The sting is gone.
Replaced with an infallible warmth and humor – love at its highest evolution.
Had her daughter slipped away so quickly from her own earthly ties?
I know that my sister and I will romp together again, one day, on the other side of the veil.
But for now she dances solo, beyond time, as I am as yet temporally distracted.
I savor her love every day, even as her presence grows dim. And the golden thread of her connection to materiality frays into nothingness.
“But if you have to go, then go. Go if it hurts. Go if it’s time. Just go knowing you were loved, and that I will never forget you.”
Taylor Jenkins Reid
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