When my older sister was born, it was after twenty-four hours of very hard labor and my parents’ worried friend kept pacing in the waiting room and asking, “When’s that little duffer going to get here?”  So they called her Duffer, although they named her Paula Ann.  She was always Duffer or Duff to us, and Paula to her friends.

      Duff died at the age of fifty-two of ovarian cancer.  As you may know, ovarian cancer is a sneaky little bastard and there are not a lot of clues sometimes.  Duff had undergone gastric bypass surgery and had lost about a hundred and thirty pounds.  She had met and married (prior to her surgery) a sweet man who treated her like a queen.  She finally had the guy she wanted, the home she wanted and was on the tippy-tip verge of having the life she had always dreamed of.  We were all delighted for her.  But in the wake of her surgery and some complications with the incision, her symptoms of ovarian cancer got lost.  By the time they diagnosed it, it had gone to her liver and there was little to be done.  She opted to forego chemotherapy and arranged for hospice so that she could live her last moments in the home she loved with the people she cared about.

      (I am still in conversation with God on that one.  No one will ever convince me that it was right or fair or kind.  No one will ever convince me that it was even God’s Will.  His timing on it totally sucked, and I have told Him so on numerous occasions.  He doesn’t usually have much to say for Himself on the topic, but I want to be sure He hears it.  If He thinks he might have made a mistake on that event, He isn’t saying.)

       Following her surgery and before the cancer mess, Duff got a laptop computer and taught herself to use Yahoo! Instant Messenger.  We would see each other on sometimes and chat.  She was slow with it, but we enjoyed connecting while each of us was going about her respective internet and email business.  It was fun to “run into” her and get the scoop on my sisters and brother, my nieces and nephews, Duff’s life with Mike, and all the little details you share in an IM conversation. 

      One day, months after her death, I signed into Messenger and saw her name still on my chat friends list under, “Family.”  I thought about deleting it.  Of course there was no point in leaving “LadybugBracy” on my list, since she would never be “on” again.  But I couldn’t bear to do it. Just like I can’t bear to take her name out of my address book, and I can’t bear to pack away the rosary beads she gave me for my wedding.  They remind me that she lived, that she loved me, and that we were sisters who knew each other so well that words were not always necessary.

       But a few years after I lost her, I was overcome by the times when maybe words were important, and I had failed to offer them.  One rainy October day – her birthday – I signed in to Yahoo! Messenger and clicked on her screen name.  The message in the chat window said, “ladybugBracy appears to be offline and will receive your messages after signing in. You can also send a message to ladybugBracy's mobile device. Send an SMS Message (Ctrl+T)”

       I had some serious doubts that any mobile device would have service from where Duff might be.  Since I was assured that she would “receive my messages after signing in,” I started to type in the lower “composing” rectangle of the chat window:

 Long time no chat.I’ve been thinking about you and I want to tell you some things.  You don’t have to respond.  I’ll assume you are listening.  Happy Birthday, by the way.  

       I hit the “Enter” key and my words when up into the “delivered” rectangle above the composing space, where Duff would presumably read them the next time she signed in. Every time I hit “enter” it sent my words preceded by “RiverGalKate” up to the delivery window.  Like a series of desperate blurty little notes into cyber/para/meta/outer/space.  Tiny confessions.  Little notes in a bottle that would never wash up on anyone’s shore.

RiverGalKate: I kept your screen name on my list so that I could remember that you were here once.  Chatting back and forth with me.  Talking about life and love and whether or not Mom could ever change. 

 RiverGalKate: But I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately, and I realize now that I was too private with you, too protective of my life and the details.  Sometimes you think you know things that you don’t, and I wasn’t very patient with that.  That was so stupid on my part. I didn’t want to be smothered by you, and I stayed too far away.   

RiverGalKate: I miss you so much more than I expected.  It’s been five years now, and it really doesn’t seem to get much better for me – the missing I mean.  So I am sending my thoughts along via Messenger.  I’m hoping that some day you will sign in from the other side and just read it.  I know it takes a lot of energy to actually operate in this world again, or at least that’s what I get from watching John Edwards and reading about these things on paranormal websites.  (I think some of the people who blog on those sites are paranormal, but you would probably know more about that than I at this point.)   This is about things left unsaid, and mostly about gratitude. 

RiverGalKate: Remember when we were kids and you used to let me sleep in your bed when I got scared?  I think back about it now, and I realize that you were probably about five when that started.  I would have been about two.  Think of it.  My chubby little self pulling at your covers and you always just opened them up and let me cuddle in.  I bet you didn’t sleep as well once I was tossing and turning beside you, but you never said no. 

RiverGalKate: And then later, when we had twin beds in the same room, and you got such a kick out of my putting on little “plays” and then always wanted me to act out stories before you let me crawl in with you.  There was that time from second grade, when I acted out how Paul Doe’s mom made him eat out of the dog dish.  You really laughed at that one.  I think I must have done about eighty versions of that story.  And then, you always loved the ones where there was a good Kathy and a bad Kathy, and you never quite knew which one you were dealing with until the very end.  Something like The Bad Seed meets The Patty Duke Show. 

There were endless renditions of that Jekyll/Hyde narrative, and I made it up as I went along, trying to make you guess and make you laugh and make you love me enough to sleep with you because once the lights were really out I was scared to be alone in my bed. 

RiverGalKate: Even then I knew there would be a natural limit to the sleeping privilege – that it was only a matter of time before we both knew I would be too old for such things.  And of course, we were right.  Eventually I felt ridiculous getting scared in the dark.  But it didn’t keep me from getting scared, did it?   

RiverGalKate: That was who you really were, that clucking hen of an older sister who always felt the rest of us were your chicks who needed tending.  And I’m sorry I got tired of the tending, because I think it made me fly the coop farther than I probably needed to.  I’m also sorry that I spent so much time trying not to be tended that I completely missed the times when you needed to be tended.  What an idiot I can be. 

 RiverGalKate: I should have been available to hear your stories.  When you were in love; or lonely; or when you were with that awful man who hit you for a couple of years and then died in your dining room.  I should have been there for you and I wasn’t.  Oh, yes, I listened carefully and was sympathetic when you were recovering from that ordeal, but really, I could have come home and taken you out to dinner.  I could have called you every weekend for awhile.  I had the excuse of the kids and Kevin and Anne and my whole soap opera of a life.  But you were living in the wake of something really wounding and I wasn’t there for you. You would have been on a plane in a nanosecond for me, and where was I?  Just busy with my life is all.   

RiverGalKate: So I’m sorry for that.  If you were still alive I would fly to New York right now and give you this note.  But I don’t have that option, so I can only hope you’ll sign in and read this some day, and then meet me at the border when I die and say, “That instant message thing was good. Not as good as Paul and the dog dish, but pretty good.” And we can both laugh and I can take you out to lunch in some café along Heaven Boulevard. 

RiverGalKate: So, just for the record and even if this only floats around cyberspace for years, unseen and unnoted, you are the best sister ever.  From the time I was born you used to bring me anything I asked for from my throne in the playpen, since you were at large and I was incarcerated by the damn thing.  (Mom always blamed you for the fact that I didn’t walk until I was eighteen months.  I suppose there is some truth to that.) Through my teenage years when I was so eager to get out of the house that I practically lived at Mary’s.  You never complained that I wasn’t there to help you with the other kids.  And then in my adulthood.  You listened to my relationship struggles and commiserated about how tricky it was to make things work.  You encouraged me to be happy and to get my Master’s Degree – not an easy combo.  You never gave up on me, and you never asked for much in return. 

RiverGalKate: I’m sorry about a lot of things.  I know now that you were, in so many ways, the mother that Mom meant to be but really couldn’t.  No one paid a higher price for her incapacities than you did, but you protected the rest of us from all that.  God knows she did her best, and she was awesome at some things.  But you were the first to pay the price of that annoying habit she had of taking all the good feeling out of an accomplishment.  There was never any room, was there, for one of us to succeed?  She was so busy being sure that we “didn’t get too big for our britches” that we never even knew when we were good at something.  Or that we existed, really.  Not a single word of praise.  And when we DID achieve something, she was so quick to remind us that it was of no consequence.  Or that she, in fact, had once done something much more (brave, smart, unusual, witty – fill in the blank) so that we could keep our tiny accomplishment in perspective. 

RiverGalKate: But you were the opposite.  You always said how important we were. How talented or smart or sophisticated or accomplished.  Like Grandma Bracy, you were unfailingly generous and proud of us all.  I counted on you for that, and I never told you how much it saved my life.  How I felt like maybe I could actually do something important some day because you believed I could.  I never said that out loud to you, and I meant to. 

RiverGalKate: So I’m typing into this stupid instant message window, wishing you were at the other end crying, and saying that you always understood that I was grateful.  Because that’s what you would have typed back.  You would be typing back right now, “Babe, I knew you knew that I loved you.  You were too smart not to.  I didn’t need for you to tell me, but thanks for saying it now.”  And we both would have been watching tears land on our keyboards, and one of us would have picked up the telephone and then we would have choked back sobs on the line with each other and you would have known that I saw how much you loved me.  I could have told you that when we were chatting sometime.  But I didn’t do that, did I?  And then you got your diagnosis and it was all I could do to get there in time to visit.   

RiverGalKate: I tried a little bit, to say these things to you, but there were so many of us who needed to say goodbye, and we didn’t have much time.  I sat beside that hospital bed in your living room, and held your hand.  I thought about asking you if I could climb in again, just for old time’s sake. But you probably would have lifted the covers and invited me to do it, and I doubt that I could have resisted.  And wouldn’t that have looked silly?  So I sat there in the darkness holding your hand.  I told you I loved you, and you said “I know.” And you did, of course.  But there was so much more to it than just “I love you.” There was so much left unsaid. 

RiverGalKate: And, oh man, it hit me like a ton of bricks when Mom and Dad finally made it to your house.  I told them that I thought you were hanging on just to see them.  They were horrified to hear that, but it was true.  I will never forget your face when Mom sat next to you and took your hand.  You looked at her like a man in the desert after 3 days without a drink when someone finally offers him a canteen of water; or like we are supposed to look at the Host before we receive communion – all full of love and awe and longing. 

RiverGalKate: And for once Mom was not talking about herself.  At least not really.  She looked right into your eyes and said, “I remember when you were born.” And I saw that hungry look on your face.   I said, “Tell her about that, Mom.  She needs to hear it.” And Mom looked like she was suddenly awake, and realized that it was true.  And I’ll give her this:  she came through in spades.  I couldn’t really stand it, it was so painful to watch you soak up every word that came out of her mouth. 

RiverGalKate: She said, “Honey, we wanted you so much.  You were our first, of course, and we waited so long to get pregnant and then it was such a hard labor and then there you were.  You were so beautiful [I know for a fact that Mom had NEVER told you you were beautiful before. You closed your eyes at that, it hit so hard] and we wanted to hold you.  We never got tired of looking at you.  You were such a good baby, and such a good daughter and you took such good care of your brother and sisters when you were older.  Really, you never gave us a minute’s worry. 

RiverGalKate: And she kept going, “This is not how it’s supposed to be you know.  I can’t believe I am sitting here and believe me if there was some way this could be me and not you I would give anything to make it true.  I’m the one who has had cancer and heart disease and ulcers and diabetes.  I should be the one in that bed.  Honey, I’ve lived my life. [she had to toss in some of her stuff, we both knew that] And I don’t know what God is thinking because I would trade places with you in a heartbeat if I could.”  I believed her.  We all believed her. 

RiverGalKate: And you just looked at her with those grateful eyes.  “I know you would, Mom” you said.  And she said she loved you, and you said you loved her, and Bob and Dad and I were crying all around the bed.  Partly because we were just so sad, and partly because we knew how amazing it was that Mom was saying nice things to you, and partly because you so deserved to have heard these things all your life.  And I think maybe all three of us were thinking that we hadn’t said those things to you ourselves, and we were feeling guilty.  I guess I shouldn’t speak for Bob and Dad, but it was true for me.  That’s why I’m typing now, like an idiot, and wish I could have been more grown up or more generous or something sooner. 

RiverGalKate: I already know that you forgive me.  That’s how you are. But you deserved a sister who could see that sometimes you needed to be little too.  That sometimes you needed a friend, or a confidante, or just someone to make you laugh. 

RiverGalKate: I actually thought about trying to act out Paul and the Dog Dish for you, but something told me it would have lost something in the translation.  I wanted to make you laugh, to somehow make this easier on you and on us.  If I could have thought of a way to distract you from the fact that you were leaving us, I would have done anything.  But all I could think of to do was sit beside you, pray for you, and read a little from the Bible when you had the energy for it. 

RiverGalKate: We all miss you, of course.  The nieces and nephews, your friends, and Mike.  I’m guessing you’ve heard from all of us in one way or another since you left.  As usual, I’m probably the last one to drop you a line. 

RiverGalKate: I guess I just always thought we’d be getting old together.  Losing our memories, talking about grandchildren, going to funerals, weddings, and family reunions.  I do all those things.  But you are not there.  We can’t pass looks between us, or hold the babies and say how much they look like someone.  I didn’t know I even wanted that.  But I did. 

RiverGalKate: So I’m going to go for now.  I’m beginning to feel ridiculous, actually.  Tell Mom and Grandma and Dan I say, “hey” and that I miss them too.  And don’t think I haven’t noticed the irony that I’m the one who’s taking care of Dad.  That was supposed to be your job, and I’m guessing you’ve had a chuckle or two over seeing me wrestle with that one.  But he is doing really well, and I know he’d want me to say “hi” for him if he knew I was chatting with you, which of course I will never tell him.  (He already thinks I’m nuts for expecting him to be kind and respectful.  I'd never live it down if he knew I was IMing you.)  So take care of yourself up there.  Enjoy those angels and being lighter than air, and put in a good word for me with the Big Guy if He exists after all. 

RiverGalKate: I keep loving you.  Write back soon.  

So if anyone actually reads this all the way to the end, go call your sister.

K8