the door opens, just wide enough

me and my sister, January 2012You know that it's been just an endless, deep source of sorrow to me to be estranged from my youngest sister as she suffers from terminal, inoperable brain cancer.  I've been just consumed with doubt and fear and helplessness over my inability to see her -- never sure if what I'm doing is right, if I should be beating down the door of her house in spite of her requests to be left alone instead of respecting her wishes.

Well, I don't have to wonder anymore.

Because two days ago, oh joys of joys, I got to visit and spent 2 1/2 hours in her company, along with her husband, and her hospice worker, and her delightful daughter.

Telling someone how much you love them is the only thing that matters in this world.

She is very weak and shaky and skinny, has lost interest in food, zones out, doesn't have a great grasp on time, and has trouble swallowing and forming her words. But she is still in there, still a smart ass, still remembering details, still correcting her daughter and husband, still in possession of her faculties, as diminished as they are.

When I walked in on Tuesday, she was in bed, wearing a favorite shirt, one given to her by her hospice nurse, that says:

Jesus loves you, but I'm his favorite.

Which made me laugh instantly, since it's so her, so Carla, still so spunky even to the end, clearly favored.

Who else could do this, defy these odds for as long as she has, kicked back at cancer and HIV for so many years, making the life she wanted, creating with her husband an absolutely adorable and whipsmart child who is every inch my sister when she was her age, 6 years old.

My heart is still broken. It is still an unbearable grief to know that she has so little time left among us, my brilliant little sister. And yet I stand in total awe of her strength and grace, turning into an angel in front of our very eyes, transforming, becoming ever-more otherworldly and powerful with every day that she lives on.

Jesus, she sure better be your favorite. I think she's earned it by now.

I don't know if I'll have the chance to see her again, to sit next to her on the couch and hold her slender hands in mine, and hear her whisper that she loves me. Maybe Tuesday was my last chance to tell her, too, how much I love her, how much we love her. I don't know if the door will open wide enough for me to be allowed back to see her in the time that remains, so I'm trying to be content, to know that it was perhaps enough. 

My heart is full and I'm so happy I saw her, our littlest one. Wishing her so much peace as she makes her way.

XX 

Comments

[Ginny Karg]

<3 Thank you for posting ... we've been hoping for an update on her status. If you do have the chance to visit her again, please send her our love, too. ~Aaron, Ginny, Ian and Caleb