Sometimes I talk out loud to Leslie. I don't say a lot, mostly because it feels weird, but I have to say things out loud to make it all seem real.
We had this voice that we used with each other. Somewhat sing-song-y and a lot of pitch, it was our way of greeting one another and now it's gone. M can do it very well and I've asked him to use it but when he does, it's like I've been kicked in the gut. I want it and hate it simultaneously.
Which has become my theme of sorts; the wanting and the hating simultaneously. An intense longing for something that I can't name and a general pissiness that plays out petulantly and often with a lot of tears.
Everything has changed. Every. Thing. And it's mostly good, really good even, except my sister is dead. And I feel guilty that she's not here and I'm laughing and having fun and she can't do any of these things anymore. I feel guilty because I'm healthy and I'm the biggest hypochondriac whose life-long fear has been cancer. She talked about that, and she actually felt bad that she had cancer, (and it being my biggest fear and all), worrying as she always did, about my feelings, a little sister who loved her big sister with all her heart right to the end.
It's those images that I wish weren't seared into my brain. That last morning in the hospital when I could barely breathe, having to say goodbye. I don't even know how I did, only that I couldn't stay because it was time to go and that was going to be it. Leslie tried to pull herself out of her heavily drugged state to say goodbye; I felt her struggling to pull herself out, even though drugged is where she needed to be.
I am forever cracked in my heart, truly broken in a way that seems near impossible, but is surprisly manageable. Maybe because it has to be. Maybe because I do get to live my life and if she can't, than I have to, for both of us.
Forever a big sister, always trying to take care of and watch out for her little.
