Just thought of the bell-bottom jeans that my late sister gave me for my 16th birthday. She had embroidered vines and leaves and flowers all down the outer seams. I wore them into shreds, then carried the shreds with me for years. I wish I had kept them.

I get up at 5 on Sundays, although I don't start work until 8. I tend to get up at least two hours before work anyway, and Mondays I have to get up at 4, so Sundays I rise a bit earlier than I need to ( Read more... )

Siblings Day is evil and must be destroyed.

Here I sit in Eugene, Oregon, a short bike ride from where she lived, until five years ago today. Here I am, and she is dead, and vanished, and the link to her life cut by her son. (With some of the stories he has now told me, no wonder he was dry-eyed and wants nothing more to do with what she left behind.) There is such a sense of "too late!" now ( Read more... )

My sister Katt is dead four years. God.

A day of hard grieving for my late sister today. A high school friend of hers popped up in facebook with a story about a school trip to DC. The class was to go to a museum and she and my sister headed for an antiwar protest in the streets instead. She remembers that my sister had a "laugh that filled up the whole room." This made me smile, as it is ( Read more... )

My sister has been dead for two years.

My sister Katt would be 64 today.

Yesterday was a drag, but got almost everything done. Today is the holiday meal from another kitchen. Oh, and I will likely be stuck in the cavernous old kitchen, not the new one with the perfect floor ( Read more... )

Back to work yesterday, though I ended up wishing I had not gone in. (I had planned to take three days' bereavement leave through Saturday, but changed my mind.) Whole new meaning to "dead week" this quarter. I was okay, though it's easy for grief to manifest as anger in the kitchen. Then the first xmas carol of the season I've heard came on, and I ( Read more... )