Silent tears had moistened my eyes and gently rolled down my cheeks when I first learned of my sister Jeannie’s passing, but it wasn’t until I made myself a cup of tea the next morning that the wrenching sobs I’ve come to know with other losses in my life poured out of me. Tear-water tea, Owl called it, filled with all things sad.[i] On so many of the mornings my sister and I spent together over the years, we began the day by sharing cups of tea. Making myself a cup of tea on the first morning of my life that I no longer had a sister, my sister, evoked the memories of all those precious early morning moments -- our time, long before anyone else was awake -- as well as the deep ache of knowing we will never again share tea and sympathy in the morning.
I needed Jeannie’s sympathy today, and kept wanting to call her to talk with her about the loss of my sister. She was my holder of sorrows, my celebrant of joys, my confidante and companion through life. My only comforting thought on this day was thankfulness that she never had to know this grief of the loss of her sister.
I was supposed to go first. She had sat at my deathbed too many times - when I was twenty and the hospital called my parents and sister to come quickly -- it was a matter of hours or minutes they had told them; a year later, when I awoke in the dimly-lit CCU to find her standing beside me, crying large loud tears, and my trying to comfort and assure her through my semi-conscious haze; and again many years later when I would awaken in another CCU with her again weeping silently by my bedside. She has been by my side through so much – helping to care for my little boy in the years I was waiting for my transplant and being my main caregiver in the weeks after.
Ten years my senior she was my role model, my caregiver, my teacher. She took care of me from a very young age, always tending and watching over me.
I so admired who she was and everything she did and wanted to be just like her. I spent hours swinging between her bedposts watching her get ready for school or for dates, listening to her 45s, and wearing her formals when I played dress-up. We had so many twin dresses, play suits, and swimsuits —which I loved, though at 12 she wasn’t particularly pleased that she still was so small she had to wear children’s sized clothes!
She taught me so many things – how to tie my shoes and lace my ice skates; play Fox & Geese, Black Jack, and Spit – so many fast and furious games we had of that (until our arthritic hands made them ridiculously slow, which we laughed about heartily as we played – two old women together); sing the songs she learned at camp – “The Ash Grove,” “A Ram, Sam, Sam,” and “Doodle-ee-Doo”; play “Night and Day” as a piano duet — we had such fun playing duets together; and recognize cardinals, bluejays, flickers, and peewees by their songs. Mostly she taught me how to be kind – “Let’s be fairies and clean up the house before Mom and Dad get home,” embrace joy – I always thought of her as the joy-bringer for life was always better when she came home from summer camp and college; and love unconditionally – for that’s the way she loved so many; that’s the way she loved me.
Jeannie loved sunshine and grabbed every minute of those sunny rays on the first warm days of spring. We spent far too many hours lying in the sun together. She loved swimming and had the most graceful crawl stroke I’ve ever seen. She loved daisies and the color yellow – nearly everything she wore was yellow.
She often told the story of filling her classroom with drawings of yellow suns so it would be filled with sunshine. She loved being a teacher. I remember how excited she was as we decorated her first kindergarten classroom. She’d come home each day filled with stories of something special that happened with a child that day. As a first-grade teacher she gave years of her life to nurturing young minds. She loved birds, and every month of every year she would teach her first-graders a new bird of the month – its size and colors, song, habitat, characteristics. We’d be walking in the woods and she’d stop and say, “Listen.” How she loved the wood thrush and song sparrow. After our mom died, she’d hear the call of the chickadee -- not the “chickadee, dee, dee,” but the “ee- eee” -- and say, “That’s mom. Can’t you hear her? She’s saying, ‘Jeannie. Jeannie.’” But the bird she loved best was the goldfinch – it’s bright yellow after all. Her greatest pleasure in life was watching the birds at her many bird feeders, and when she ended up in a memory care facility in the final weeks of her life, both her boys made sure that she had a bird feeder right outside her window. Her friend, JoAnn, told me that Jeannie had told her that what she wanted written in her obituary was to ask people to scatter bird seed in her memory.
Jeannie and her lifelong friend, JoAnn.
Mostly Jeannie loved her friends and family. She loved her times with her group of good women friends, especially her best friend, JoAnn. They’d met in second grade when they’d both moved from the city of Akron to the small village where we grew up and commiserated over how much they didn’t like their new school. Thus forged the friendship of a lifetime – with long walks around the village with JoAnn’s dog, Penny; being maids of honor in each other’s weddings; having children around the same time; visiting on the phone over the many miles that separated them physically but never emotionally and traveling to be with each other as often as possible; playing Words with Friends until the last years of my sister’s dementia made that impossible; sharing a final farewell in the last hour of my sister’s life.
She made a home with her husband, Dick, for over 60 years, where they raised their two sons, Mark and John. And just as she faithfully wrote letters to Dick every day he was in Vietnam at the beginning of their marriage, so he faithfully attended her every evening in the care facility at the end. Jeannie was so proud of her two boys and loved them fiercely.
She loved being a grandma, her love being returned to her in great devotion by her six grandchildren. She so often told me how she made sure to spend special time with each of them individually and I’m sure she made each one feel affirmed for their unique gifts and who they are in the world.
She was the lynchpin of us siblings – the connecting point between the pre-WWII babies and the post-WWII babies. She had a special affection for our brother, Bruce. When she was eight and he was two he got Perthes disease, and for two years it was her job every day to help him get his braces on his legs. I think she always saw that tender little boy in him whenever she was with him. We were all three together just a week ago. By then Jeannie was mostly no longer aware and responsive, but when she heard Bruce’s voice and saw him bending down to her in her wheelchair, her face lit up like the sunshine she so loved, she smiled and clapped her hands. That was so Jeannie – delighting and applauding all the people she loved simply for being.
There’s a special bond between sisters, at least there was between my sister and me. We shared everything and understood each other in a way no one else could. She was the one I’d always call with happy news -- she was with me when my pregnancy test for Paul said “positive!” and was the first one I called after he was born – and the one I’d call with my sorrows and disappointments. I could turn to her with anything and she’d be there for me. We spent hours and hours walking and talking. And we could laugh together in a way I’ll never know again. Even in my last visit with her in May we were just silly together and laughing in that way that sisters do. She thought my being born a girl and finally having a sister, after ten years of being the only girl with two brothers, was the best thing that ever could have happened to her. In reality it was the other way around, that being so beloved by my sweet sister from the moment I was born to the moment she breathed her last breath was the best thing that ever could have happened to me. Who in the world would I have been without her steadfast love, support, affirmation, and tender care a constant in my life? Among the last things I told her was that we would always be together in spirit. I trust that we will.
The last few years of Jeannie’s life were sad and often difficult as dementia slowly stripped pieces of her mind from her. It was often hard to remember the sister I’d always known. But on the day after she died, for the first time in a long time, the shroud of suffering that had lately surrounded her lifted, and I could catch whispers of her cheery, bright voice all around me, a smile in the morning sunlit clouds. I caught glimpses of her throughout the day – in the hummingbird, whom I hadn’t seen all summer, showing up next to me on my deck; the yellow t-shirt hanging on the line like a prayer flag – the same shade of yellow she loved most and hanging right next my “Donate Life” t-shirt; the single daisy that bloomed out of season on the path where Ben and I walked. Ben had refused to walk on our usual trail that day, so we went to another – where I’d found the daisy. Perhaps he wanted to be sure I saw it. He is wise that way – helping my cup of tear-water tea be filled instead with joy. As my mother would so often say, “Weeping may tarry with the night, but joy comes with the morning.”[ii]
On the night my sister died, in those moments when she was passing through the veil, the heavens here in the north were bright with colorful lights. I’d like to think of them as Jeannie dancing in the light, free, joyous – a bright light in the universe. She was in mine.
Do you see the angel wings?
My deep gratitude to my friend, Bob King, for his generous permission to use his photo of the Aurora that took place on the night of my sister’s passing.