My sister at sunset

The mind has its phantom thoughts that are renegades from logic. They are vaporous and disappear as quickly as they arrive. Twice since my sister killed herself a month ago I have been visited by two such thoughts, both of them questioning with a unified voice, "I wonder if Karen will call me tonight?" And poof. Each of the two vanished with an attending slap; "Oh yeah, she is dead."

I haven't been able to get a hold of the fact of her demise, in part I believe, because there was through cremation no stilled body to gaze upon at her wake. Instead at a cushioned spot for kneeling there was, at eye level, a photo of her and an ornate urn. Ashes to ashes and all of that. I gazed upon those tokens of her life and death and felt the dullest pangs of loss. It just didn't seem real that my dear sister was gone for ever and ever, amen.

Her graveside service too with its priest and Catholic invocation of Jesus and the eternal hereafter provided no closure for me. The words of the priest read from a book did not sooth or console. The man did not know my sister, nor did she think herself a Catholic. She'd left that religion years ago. The service however was not for me and as I stood there at my sister's grave site I had only one hope and that was that the priest's words eased my father's suffering from the loss of his daughter, the woman who would always remain his little girl.

There is this grainy 8mm-like film loop that runs in my mind each time my unbidden thoughts turn to my sister. In the loop she is falling. Exactly where she is is murky. I can not place the location. She is falling is all I know. Whether she was pushed or slipped is a mystery. For she is always in mid fall in a space that seems to have no top or bottom. I see her falling through the air without aid of a parachute.

Besides such cinematic thoughts are those born of regrets: Could I have in someway said magic words to my sister, words that had the power to rescind her fatal and final decision? Was there another way things might have been? Could I have in my last phone call to her found the right words to fill her once again with hope of better days to come? But all my questions are for naught. They've not an inkling of power to undo all that's transpired. And to think them I've come to see is a kind of betrayal to all my fond memories of my sister when she was radiantly alive and in remission from that horrible disease of depression.

In time I trust I will adjust to her passing and the film loop of her falling will fade away and be replaced by the images of a fond memory of my sister and I: In that memory the two of us are on the beach at sunset with her beloved dog, Stella. The sun is brilliant in smeared oranges, yellows, and golds and Stella is digging up crabs and barking at porpoises. A slight breeze is blowing and I am feeling content, serene, and in awe of the magnificence before me. The moment is one of utter perfection and Karen turns and looks at me and says, "God. Isn't this great." If ever I had an obligation to her it is to remember her in that light.