Happy Birthday Sister

This week my sister, Jackie, would have turned 61 years old.  She passed away when she was 19 years old.  One of the saddest things about losing someone so young is that there are few people who remember her, knew her, realize that it is her birthday because her time on this earth was so short lived.  She never got a chance to have lifelong friends or create a family of her own.  I wish we would have done more to memorialize her throughout the years but I think we all were trying to make some sense of her death and how to move on individually.

I personally cannot say that I knew my sister that well.  I only had 14 years with her and when you think that humans tend to have their first memories between age 2 and 4 on average, I really only had about 10 years of memories with her.  And now that I am the age that I am, my childhood memories are even more blurry so my memories of her are even more limited.  I am not one of those people who can remember their seating chart in their 5th grade class–yes, there are people like that–I know two of them(love you Karin and Sue♥️).

My daughter recently asked me if when I think of Jackie am I missing/grieving her or missing/grieving having a sister, which was a very thought provoking question.  My immediate answer was having a sister because like I said, I don’t feel like I really got to know my sister.  There are a couple of reasons for that.

First, there was a 5 year age difference between my sister and I and when you are 10 and 15, those 5 years are big.  We were going through dramatically different things in life throughout our childhoods.  I always felt like my sister saw me as her younger, bratty, spoiled sister and I never thought she thought too much of me.  We shared a room and I admit that I snooped through her stuff all the time and she caught me a lot so her opinions of me might have been justified.  However, that snooping actually allowed me to get to know her–those high school notes to your friends and journal writings can be very revealing!

The second reason I didn’t get to know my sister that well is that I don’t believe she knew herself that well.  Do any of us know ourselves that well at 17, 18, 19?  Besides her age, my sister struggled a lot.  She was trying to figure out life and where she was going in life so if she was confused, how could anyone else really get to know her much less her 14 year old sister who was just discovering life herself.

So yes, my immediate answer to my daughter’s question is I miss and grieve not having a sister.  I wonder if we would have gotten close over the years.  I wonder what kind of life she would have created for herself.  I wonder what kind of relationship she would have had with my daughters.  I wonder how different our family would have been because her death was definitely a turning point not only in my life but my entire family’s life. However, I do miss Jackie.  I miss the girl I remember her being and more importantly I miss the woman she would have become because I really think she would have been pretty incredible and I believe we would have become very close.  It is tradition to celebrate people on their birthdays so instead of talking about my sister’s struggles and how she died, I really want to take time to celebrate her and what I remember about her.

Jackie was a great athlete.  She didn’t use these skills in the high school environment but did really well in middle school and on her rec softball team.  My dad bragged about her athleticism all the time. She was also very smart.  Again, this wasn’t reflected in grades but she was.  She was an animal lover, especially horses.  She owned her own horse, Missy, that she kept at a farm down the road from our house.  That horse was so big.  I remember my sister preferring to ride her bareback but when she did this, she had to stand on something to get on Missy or she would make a running start to hop on to her.  My sister loved music. Some of my music influences are due to listening to her albums and just like me she really paid attention to lyrics. In my snooping, I would often find lyrics of songs written in her journal writings. She was stubborn, which most would not see as a positive attribute but it is definitely a trait that runs in my family so it feels a bit endearing to me.  

My favorite and most vivid memory of my sister was the last time I saw her.  I was going to be starting high school the next week and had just received my class schedule.  She was asking me about my classes and teachers and giving me hints as to how to navigate high school.  It was the first time I didn’t feel our age difference and felt like she was really looking out for me.

I don’t think there are many of you who will read this who knew Jackie but if there are, I would love to hear a memory or something you remember about her because everyone deserves to be remembered and celebrated on their birthday no matter how long they were on this earth or how long it has been since they have been gone.