The Music of a Year

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes. How do you measure, measure a year?

Twelve months. Fifty-two weeks. Three hundred sixty-five days. That’s how long it’s been since my sister took her last breath. When I placed my cell phone next to me that night, I knew it was going to ring before my alarm sounded the following morning.

Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world. She took the midnight train going anywhere.

It was 3:34 AM. I knew without looking who was calling and the tears started to fall before I said hello. I fervently wished I had changed my ring tone to something other than “Don’t Stop Believing” because I knew in that moment I had to stop believing that somehow a miracle would come through and my sister would live.

Hold me closer tiny dancer. Count the headlights on the highway. Lay me down in sheets of linen. You had a busy day today.

It was the night before Memorial Day; two and a half days after I received the phone call. All alone in my car with darkness surrounding me, I pulled to the shoulder of the highway. The sounds that came from within me were almost foreign. I punched and kicked whatever I could find that wouldn’t break. I shrieked and wailed until my voice was nothing but a desperate whisper and my sobs were tearless.

Loved ones she left behind, just trying to survive, and understand the why, feeling so lost inside.

I sat in the front row of the church, holding my mother’s hand and trying to give comfort that I knew would be impossible to find. My oldest sister Cheryl sat behind us with my daughter, and my son was seated with the pallbearers. The sanctuary was full and the overflow of people whose lives my sister had touched were seated in another room watching via closed circuit broadcast. I had just finished what I felt was the most fitting tribute I could deliver in honor of my sister. Just two months before she died, Kenna told me she always looked forward to my visits because no one could make her laugh the way I did, and those moments of happiness were a welcome break from doctors and chemotherapy and pain medications and sickness. I filled the eulogy with funny anecdotes drawn from my experiences as Kenna’s little sister and I made people laugh; a welcome break from death and grief and funeral preparations and heartache.

Hark, now hear the sailors cry. Smell the sea and feel the sky. Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic.

We watched as images of Kenna’s life passed before us on a screen at the front of the church. Forty-two years condensed into less than ten minutes. Her husband and daughters stood together at the pulpit and read words of love and graciousness I barely remember. Pastor Derrick delivered a heartfelt sermon that has also since faded into the recesses of my mind. We were all on auto-pilot those first few days, making the details foggy. Unfortunately I will never forget watching as the men from the funeral home folded the satin lining back into the box and closed the lid forever on my sister.

And our lives went on without her.

All my days I’m by your side, ‘til I have no days left to give. But from the bottom of my soul, you’re the reason I live. And baby, that’s the kind of love you’re in.

Two weeks after Kenna’s funeral I watched a short video clip as she and her husband slow danced on stage, serenaded by the LoCash Cowboys. It was taken just 14 months prior when they traveled with their two daughters to Destin, Florida. He re-proposed to her on that stage and they renewed their vows on the beach on their 23^rd anniversary. The entire trip was funded by their community and co-workers, and a high school friend made arrangements for accommodations and attractions at no cost to the family. A gift for a dying woman and her family; an opportunity to create valuable memories to borrow upon later when memories would be all they had left.

It’s a quarter after one, I’m all alone and I need you now. I said I wouldn’t call but I lost all control and I need you now. And I don’t know how I can do without, I just need you now.

I tried all summer to surround myself with people I love. Family members came to visit frequently, and I returned the favor more often than I had in the past. My best friend flew in from New York for a whirlwind weekend. Cheryl and I traveled to Texas for a comedy show, continuing the tradition of “Sister Vacations” we had begun with Kenna in 2008 when we briefly thought the cancer was gone. But summer was coming to a close. My daughter would be returning to school soon, and life would fall back into a routine. Without the much-appreciated distractions of guests and activities, I found myself alone with my grief and searching for my “new normal,” the life I would have to lead without my sister. I missed her laughter. I missed her voice and her face. I missed the scar on her wrist from when she got her hand caught underneath a floor heater when she was three. I missed her flawless handwriting. I missed her sarcasm and the faux stern glare that told me she was just pretending she wasn’t amused when in reality she was. I missed being able to pick up the phone and call her to relay my latest gripe because I knew no one would get angry right along with me quite the way Kenna did. I missed my sister. I missed my friend. I didn’t know how I would be able to live my life without her.

But I did.

Blue skies smiling at me. Nothing but blue skies do I see.

It was just before dawn one morning in late October. I was in bed asleep with the blanket over my head and I peeked out from under the covers to find that I was outside. All I saw was bright blue sky, even when I looked over the edge of my bed. It was though I was asleep on a cloud. As I looked up I saw the earth casting a shadow on the moon, but the sky was still bright blue. I heard the words, “Have you ever seen the earth’s shadow? I have.” The feeling that pervaded this dream was that I had been specifically chosen to experience something that no one else on earth had ever experienced. Upon waking I was disappointed to realize that I had only been dreaming, but the feeling of awe carried me through the day.

I’m gonna miss that smile. I’m gonna miss you my friend. Even though it hurts the way it ended up, I’d do it all again.

The holiday season was approaching, and with it came Kenna’s birthday. I sorted through old photographs and scanned the best ones to my computer. I worked late into the night to create a digital slide show in her memory and burned copies for my family. My bizarre manifestations of grief had finally stopped haunting me. I was no longer paralyzed from fear and confusion. I started writing again. The 28^th of December came and went and I didn’t mentally note the number of months since my sister died, the way I had on the 28^th of every month prior. Even though the year was awful as a whole, I was able to look back and see the joys, the things that carried me through, the things that balanced it out. I knew I would never “get over” losing my sister, but for the first time since her death, I knew I was going to be okay.

Walking through these empty rooms, tears in my eyes. This is where the story ends, this is goodbye.

Kenna’s husband had moved to a new house, on his way to becoming husband to someone new in his life, and I was picking through Kenna’s belongings. Everything tangible that was left of her life was all that remained in the house where she had lived. I didn’t begrudge my brother-in-law his happiness and I didn’t resent his new fiancé. But at the same time, I hated to think of a new family living in Kenna’s house. People I don’t know would park their cars in the garage where Kenna and I had once started a fire with pine cones in a metal bucket because we were cold and slightly intoxicated. Nameless people would sleep in Kenna’s bedroom and plant flowers in her flower beds and pick up the pecans that fall from her trees in autumn. Complete strangers would sit by the fireplace in the room where I said goodbye to my sister for the last time. In my mind it would always be Kenna’s house no matter who lived there. It was another step in my “new normal” that I didn’t want to take, and I resisted the change.

But it happened anyway.

But I won’t cry for yesterday, there’s an ordinary world somehow I have to find. And as I try to make my way to the ordinary world, I will learn to survive.

Maybe I expected that life without my sister would be somehow different, that I would be so dramatically changed by her death that something profound would happen to the world around me. There were times when I thought it would never end, that I would never be able to laugh again, that I would never find happiness, that Kenna’s death was always going to hang over my life and rain on all the potential good moments that were to come in the future. But it didn’t happen that way. I still have my moments, and plenty of them, when I miss my sister, and I cry or scream over how unfair it is that she’s gone. But I also have plenty of good moments. Laughing until I cry. Hugging my kids. Hearing my two-year-old great-niece say “Love you Paula!” Relaxing on a Sunday. Going to a concert with a friend. Winning $120 on a 40 cent bet. Eating sushi with Cheryl. Going to a karaoke party and singing, knowing that no one cares if I’m not that good. Getting a pedicure with my nieces. Taking goofy pictures. Hanging out in a yogurt shop in Texas with Hal Sparks!

So it hasn’t all been bad, in spite of cancer and death and grieving. IN SPITE OF. That’s why I love the good moments so much, simply because I can still have them. It’s like flipping the bird to cancer. It took my sister, but it didn’t take my spirit or hers for that matter, or my ability to enjoy life. “The best revenge is living well.” And while I can’t literally get revenge on something that has no consciousness, I still feel somewhat vindicated. It is losing its power over my life.

I have spent a lot of time over the past year playing WWKD? What Would Kenna Do? What would Kenna say? What would Kenna advise? What would Kenna want? Those questions have gone unanswered for a year, and will continue to go unanswered. I do know one thing for certain, only because she conveyed it to me in the months before she died. Kenna would not want us to use her death as an excuse for poor behavior. Kenna would not want us to hold ourselves back trying to figure out what she would have done if she were here. Kenna fought that mean bitch of a disease every step of the way, and we have to do the same. We have to fight back against the pain it caused our family. We have to LIVE, not just exist. We have to find our new normal and embrace it, even the painful parts, because living in the past is letting cancer win.

It’s not forgetting her, it’s honoring her.

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean. Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens. Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance. And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance…

Kenna wants us to dance.