death in the springtime, resurrection

As you might imagine, I've been keeping company with Death quite a bit lately. 

What's funny is that this period of time -- the last month really, overlapping perfectly this rapprochement with Carla, at the very end of her journey -- has been one of such intense work, for both The Husband and me.

We're both doing exactly what we should be doing -- working our asses off at what we love, what we do.

It's been this busy springtime behind-the-scenes getting-everything-ready kind of feeling, in our own way using all of the energy we stored up over the winter to push our green shoots out into the lengthening sunlight. So very much work.

And through it all, this ever-present awareness that my baby sister is dying, slowly-slowly yielding up her earthly form, doing her own work to transform, to return to the elemental, to be ever more her self even as the self we have all known and loved, vanishes gradually, before our very eyes.

The thought now is that perhaps she's hanging on until tomorrow, Easter, which is her 7th wedding anniversary.  It's entirely possible. She's that tough.  She's that willful.

Every day I send off my neutral-toned inquiring text to my bother-in-law [deliberate spelling, yes], finding dozens of ways to ask, without asking directly, "Is my baby sister still breathing?"  

When the answer comes, and sometimes it doesn't for a while, for a day or more, while we wait and wait, bated breath and all that, for word to come through, then I relay first to my parents, then to my son and my other sister, and we all follow up and support each other through what is a truly horrible but also miraculous time.

Unless I send off my carefully-worded missive, generally 10 words or less, not more than two sentences, the sad truth -- or not sad, it's just the truth -- is that I seldom hear anything, not a peep. I try not to be annoyed by this (sometimes fail), knowing that the man my sister married has given years of his life, devoted himself to her 24/7 care, a loving fact that has surely contributed to her bold defiance of all of the odds stacked against her.  Keeping Death at bay, for so long, so many years.  My little sister who has kicked HIV's ass for over 20 years, who has fought this cancer for over four years, this cancer that now is taking her.

I try to think about her, yielding her earthly form, growing out into some other dimension, using everything that she's learned and gained and stored up, to push on through to something new, somewhere else, taking form in a new way, somewhere out of our ken, somewhere her bright green unfurling under a sun we can't see.

Perhaps it will come to pass that tomorrow, in her way, as she can, she will celebrate her 7th wedding anniversary and all that that represents for her and her family. 

Meanwhile, I let the air flow in and out of my lungs, unobstructed. I try not to check my phone every five minutes, hoping for news this morning, just wanting to know, on this glorious morning if my sister is still breathing, lighter than a feather, eyes elsewhere.

XX