Whenever she dressed up in her tutu and toe shoes, I thought my sister was the most beautiful girl in the world. And when she was six and went off to school without me, I sat by the window and cried all day long. She must have felt sorry for me because when she got home she told me, “School’s not much fun. They make you line up just to go to the bathroom.” Then the next year when I had to go to school, I didn’t want to!
Erin and I shared a room until I was eight and my grandmother died. Then Erin got her own room, and I cried about that because I missed her. I also got all her hand-me-downs, her old toys and books, her case of the chicken pox, and all the valentines from the boys she didn’t like in the third grade.
But she taught me stuff too. She taught me how to spit water through the space between my front teeth. She taught me how to get even with mean boys (“Dont hit them—shove them!”), and she taught me how to use makeup and how to put together neat outfits. She also taught me that you should never keep people waiting. (This is something I’m still working on, but at least I know I should be on time, and someday I’m going to surprise her and never be late again.)
Sometimes I hate being the “baby” of the family. It’s awful being told “You’re too young,” and “Why can’t you behave like your sister?” But Erin took up for me lots of times and once got punished for flushing Dad’s pipe tobacco down the toilet (I wanted to see it swirl in the bowl and turn the water brown).
In two years Erin’s going off to college, and it’ll be a time of new freedom for me. No more sharing the bathroom. No more waiting for the vanilla ice cream to be eaten before we buy chocolate because vanillas Erin’s favorite. No more being fussed at because Erin’s room’s neat and mine’s a mess. No more borrowing her car, her hair spray, or her pantyhose. No more sister’s shadow to live in. I’ll miss her like crazy. (Of course, I can’t tell her because I’d never live it down.)
In summary, I believe that sisters are more than blood relatives. Over time they either become friends, or they wind up killing each, other! Sisters are made by living every day with each other and wearing each other down until the rough spots are smooth. They’re made by sharing secrets you’d never tell Mom, and out of doing things for each other just because you feel like it, not because you have to. I guess you could say sisters are “grown,” not manufactured, in a very special place called a family.
Erin finished reading and let out a long, shuddering breath because it felt as if something heavy was pressing against her chest. She had never known—never even guessed—that Amy had felt that way about her. So many times Erin had simply brushed Amy aside, ignored her, or worse—teased and kidded her. Especially when they’d been younger. Now she saw that Amy had always cared about her … had loved her.
She brushed away moisture from her cheeks. Grown, not manufactured, Amy had written. Fearfully and wonderfully made, Amy’s voice had said on the tape. Erin gazed at her sister’s body. The eyelids were slightly parted, and she could just make out Amy’s once-blue eyes, now glassy like doll’s eyes. “Fixed and dilated,” Dr. Dupree had said.
“Where are you, Amy?” Erin whispered. Through the years she’d asked, “Where’s Amy?” a hundred times, but now the question took on a different meaning. Amy’s body breathed, but it wasn’t alive. Her heart beat, but it was a mechanical thing—a pump. The essence of Amy—her soul, her will, her personality—was gone. All that was left was an illusion, a trick done with machines. The days that had been ordained for her had run out—for Amy time was over.
Erin felt a sense of resignation, of finality. She touched the tube protruding from Amy’s mouth, fingering the tape that held it in place. Gently she rested her head on her sisters breast and listened to the heart beating strong and steady.
Erin shut her eyes, lost herself in the echo of false life and whispered, “Good-bye, Amy. I love you.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Erin, are you absolutely sure you want to do this?” Mrs. Bennett asked over the conference table in the consultation room.
“I’m sure.” Erin rubbed her eyes wearily, ignoring Dr. DuPree and Mr. Fogerty, and concentrated on her parents. In truth she was totally drained and exhausted. She was tired of fighting the inevitable.
“Once you sign the papers,” Dr. DuPree said, “we’ll gather the organ-retrieval team and take Amy upstairs for surgery.”
“There are people who will benefit this very day from your generosity,” Mr. Fogerty added.
Erin held up her hand. “Please, spare me the details.”
“You don’t really want to do this, do you, Erin?” her father asked.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. Amy’s dead. I believe that now, so what difference does it make if we donate her organs?”
“We have to be in agreement.”
“I’m in agreement,” she said dully. She watched her mother hunch over the table and scratch her signature on the bottom of the consent form. Mrs. Bennett slid the paper to her husband, who signed it too. Erin noticed that his hand was trembling.
Dr. DuPree took the paper. “Would you like to see your daughter one last time?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Bennett said, and as Erin followed her parents to Neuro-ICU, she couldn’t help thinking that this is how a condemned person must feel as he walks to his execution.
At the door of the cubicle, Mr. Bennett turned and said to the assembled staff, “My family and I want to thank you for all the care and support you gave us.”
“Well pack up her things and send them down to the Patient Consultant Office,” Becky said. “That way you don’t have to come back up here.”
Erin saw that Becky had tears in her eyes. She wanted to reach out to her and say, “Its all right. You did everything you could. I’m not mad at you anymore.” But she said nothing.
The three of them went into the cubicle where Amy lay. Erin walked to the opposite side of the bed from her parents, feeling strangely detached, as if she were standing outside herself and watching a movie.
“Good-bye, baby girl,” Mrs. Bennett whispered. She didn’t touch her daughter.
“Good-bye, Princess,” Mr. Bennett said.
Erin said nothing, because she had already told Amy all she’d wanted to say. But she did want to touch her sister one last time while her skin was warm, while her heart still beat and her chest still moved with the flow of air into her lungs.
Erin stroked Amy’s arm. She looked alive. She felt alive. An illusion, she reminded herself. The fingers on Amy’s hand twitched and flexed. “She moved! Amy moved,” Erin said, incredulously.
Dr. DuPree rushed into the room. “Its spinal reflex,” he said, patting her shoulder. “I assure you that’s all it is, Erin.”
“No! I saw her move.”
“Erin, honey—” Mrs. Bennett said, her voice anguished. “I saw her move once too. Remember, I told you. But it wasn’t real. Amy’s dead, Erin. She’s really dead. Please believe us.”
The expression on everyone else’s faces told Erin that her mother wasn’t lying. She kept staring at Amy’s hand, but there was no more movement, no more sign of life. “How can you be sure? How do you know?” she fired at the doctor.
“Because nothing else has changed. Her pupils are still fixed and dilated—”
“Stop it!” She was crying and couldn’t stop. “Nothing’s real around here! Everything’s fake!”
“Perhaps a sedative—”
“No! I don’t need one. I need to get out of this place. It’s rotten. It stinks! Just go ahead and take Amy upstairs and get it over with. Do you hear me? Get the whole thing over with!”
Her father reached for her, but Erin backed away, found the door, and bolted. She ran down the hall, desperate to get away from the hospital. In the car her hands were shaking so badly, she could hardly get the key into the ignition, and once she did, she was crying so hard, she could barely see to drive. Erin never remembered how she got home. She simply found herself parked in the driveway, and the next thing she knew sh
e was in her bathroom. The odor of the hospital seemed to cling to her skin and clothes, making her gag. She wanted to be sick, but her stomach was too empty.
Erin felt dirty. Still crying, she stepped inside the shower and turned on the water full blast. Like fine needles the hot water stung her face and arms. She picked up the soap and ran it up her arms, across her blouse, and up her neck. If only she could get clean again.
She turned her face upward and let the water pour over her, trying to wash away the cloying smell of death that was strangling her.
Chapter Nineteen
The Bennetts kept Amy’s funeral simple, choosing to have only a grave-side service for their family and a handful of friends. Erin would have liked for Beth Clark to be there, but she was still in Gainesville, where her mother was recovering from her transplant operation. Erin asked Ms. Thornton to come, and of course Shara, whom she asked to sing.
“What song would you like?” Shara had wanted to know.
“You choose,” Erin told her. “Something special for Amy. Something for all of us.”
Shara hugged her. “Oh, Erin, I’m sorry. So sorry.”
“Its almost over,” Erin told her. “Just one more day, and it will all be over.”
The April morning of the burial smelled fresh with the promise of summer, and the vivid colors of the sky and grass made the day seem more like a garden party than a funeral. Wildflowers bloomed, butterflies danced, honeybees gathered pollen. Erin wondered how the world could look so beautiful, how creation could be so active on such a day of sadness.
Her parents had dressed in black. They both wore sunglasses, and her mother had bought a hat with a wide brim that flopped low over her forehead. Erin had decided to wear white. “Its the color the Japanese wear for mourning,” shed told her mother when shed started to express disapproval. “Besides, I don’t think Amy would have wanted everyone dressed in black. Too drab.”
They sat together in a row, facing Amy’s coffin, which was surrounded by baskets of flowers. During the service Shara leaned over to ask, “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I am,” Erin told her. Her eyes were dry, and she meant it. “I guess I got everything out at the hospital. This part almost seems like an afterthought.”
Erin tried to concentrate on the ministers words but kept getting distracted by the world that surrounded them. Somehow it seemed to her that all creation was dancing, and she began to sway slightly to the silent, secret music of clouds and sunlight, flowers and insects.
At the foot of her chair she spotted a dandelion. She plucked it, and inspecting it, realized how perfectly it was made. Its head was a symmetry of seeds that resembled stars, each connected to the central core. Earth and sky, Erin mused. She was holding a tiny universe in the palm of her hand! Trying to be inconspicuous, she raised the dandelion to her lips and blew gently; then she watched as the seeds scattered and sailed away.
The minister finished his eulogy, and Shara stood. Erin listened to her friends voice but kept watching the dandelion fluff floating in the air.
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I’m found,
Was blind, but now I see.”
Was blind, but now I see. The words bounced around in Erin’s mind like echoes off empty walls. She caught her breath in wonderment. Suddenly she saw, truly saw, something she hadn’t seen before. Because of the gift of Amy’s eyes, someone was able to see the beautiful world again. And because of the gift of Amy’s heart, someone else was able to breathe the fresh, clean air for another day.
The flowers, the butterflies, the greening of the grass, told her that life was cyclic, season after season. It came, it went. It came again. And that just as the dandelion had shed its seeds to take root and grow again, Amy had given herself to all the tomorrows of someone else’s life.
Erin gazed at Amy’s coffin, draped with a mantle of pink roses, and knew with certainty that Amy wasn’t in it. Maybe her body would be buried, but the person of Amy, her spirit, would not. For Amy was with Erin still and would live in her heart for all the days of her life.
Around her, chairs rattled, and with a start Erin realized that the funeral service was over. Her father reached out and took her hand. “We made it, honey.”
“Yes, we made it.”
Her mother leaned against her husband and he cradled her to him. He slipped his other arm around Erin. “I’ll bet Amy would have liked the service,” Mrs. Bennett said.
“She would have liked it,” Erin agreed.
Her parents started for the long black limo parked on a narrow roadway, but Erin lingered behind. Shara stood next to her, sniffing back tears. “Your song was perfect,” Erin told her.
“Thanks. I was afraid my voice would break up.” Shara eyed her. “I know this is an awful day for you Erin, but you look … well, settled. Sort of peaceful.”
Erin lifted her face toward the sun. White clouds billowed overhead. “I feel peaceful.”
Shara said, “I always envied you, Erin, because I always wanted a sister.”
Shara’s confession surprised Erin. Seeing fresh tears pool in her friend’s eyes made Erin want to comfort her. “Sisters are special, and they have something very special between them.” Erin smiled mysteriously. “But you know, Amy and I were much more than sisters—we were best friends.”
Time to Let Go
I’d like to express my appreciation to Roses Colmore-Taylor, M.Ed., of REACH, Chattanooga, Tennessee.
• • •
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
—MATTHEW 5:4 (KJV)
Chapter One
“By your silence I sense that you’d rather be anywhere but here talking with me. And I’m also assuming it wasn’t your idea to come.”
Erin Bennett glared at Dr. Roberta Richardson and released an exaggerated sigh. “There’s nothing to talk about. I don’t need a psychiatrist to pick my brain apart.”
“I’m not a psychiatrist; I don’t dispense medications in my practice. I’m a professional counselor, a family therapist, and your parents are concerned about you and thought I could help—”
“Help how? I’m perfectly fine. It’s my parents who need counseling.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because they’re the ones who’re making me come here. There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s them”.
Dr. Richardson pressed her fingertips together and leveled soft brown eyes at Erin sitting on the other side of the polished oak desk. Quietly she said, “ ‘Perfectly fine’ seventeen-year-old girls don’t have incapacitating, unexplained headaches.”
Erin winced, remembering the fierce pain that carne on with little warning. The doctors had referred to them as “migraines,” even though they weren’t altogether typical of most migraines. Erin didn’t care what they called them. She only knew that they were interfering with her senior year at Briarwood. “I’m sure there’s a good explanation,” she said stubbornly.
Dr. Richardson opened the manila folder on her desk. “According to all the testing you’ve undergone in the past two months, there’s no physiological reason for them. ‘No reasonable medical explanation,’ ” Dr. Richardson read from the open file folder. “Looks as if they covered everything from brain tumors to epilepsy.”
Erin shuddered, remembering how they’d injected dye into her veins and taken endless X-rays of her head while she lay perfectly still on a hard metal table. Like a corpse, she thought. Or a person in a coma. “They just haven’t found the cause yet. Doctors don’t know everything. Just because they can’t figure it out is no reason to tell my parents that I’m some kind of a nut case.”
“I know you’re not a nut case, but aren’t you concerned about your headaches?”
Erin felt her anger and resentment turning into tears, but she held them back. “Yes,” she whispered, miserably, wanting to add, “More than anything”. In the past month Erin
had gotten sick twice at school and had to go home. Sometimes she had bad dreams in which her head was hurting, and when she awoke, she really did have a severe headache. “But I’m taking medicine for them,” Erin told Dr. Richardson. In the previous few months, Erin had been popping aspirin every day, and when her parents dragged her to a specialist, he gave her stronger pills that relieved the headaches but also wiped her out.
“Sometimes medications only relieve symptoms and never deal with the cause,” Dr. Richardson continued. “Good health is more than treating bodily ailments. Human beings are made up of soma—body—and psyche—soul. I believe that you shouldn’t treat one without treating the other.”
“Are you saying that my headaches are all in my imagination?”
“Absolutely not. They’re real enough. But it’s important to look at the whole person, not just the malady, before seeking a cure.” Dr. Richardson shoved the folder aside and said, “I’m glad you’re here, Erin, and I’d like to get to know you better.”
Erin felt like saying, “I don’t want to know you better,” but thought better of it. She didn’t want her parents coming down on her the way they were always coming down on each other. Her mother was forever working at her boutique, and when she was at home, she was yelling about something or other at her husband.
Erin didn’t think her father was doing so great either. He stayed away from the house, using his teacher’s job at Briarwood as an excuse, but when he was home, he acted so withdrawn that he might as well be gone. Maybe if Amy were still around, things would be different.
It had been a hard summer after Amy’s death, but with the new school year half-over, life was back to normal. If only her parents would stop their fighting. And if only she didn’t have these blasted headaches—