August 21—Marina Del Rey
Margaret! I wish that we could have tea.
My sister Margaret was 18 months younger than me. We could not have been more different. As children, we used to say that she was the moon and I was the sun.
When I went into boarding school in India, at 7, she was not old enough to join, and though I was in my own personal crisis of abandonment, I healed and moved on. She never forgave my mother for separating us, and when she joined me at school two years later she was my shadow. She walked a walk of non sweetness. She was independent, discerning, defiant, and the world was not easy on her.
When we came back to the states in the mid 60’s, she played the roles required, as an American…and even though she was adored by boys and a beautiful cute pom pom girl, she isolated herself, except from me.
I did not do well in the realm of ‘being an American’ and after two years was off to the ‘best girls’ school in the country’, in Northfield, Massachusetts. With this, Margaret felt abandoned by me and never forgave me…..
Until…
Twenty years later when she got brain cancer. By this time she was living in Seattle, she was married, a professional potter, a triathlon athlete and with two tiny boys. I was a single parent to two pre-teen-age daughters in Charleston, South Carolina, balancing supporting everyone in the healing arts and theater and two buddingly gorgeous daughters who thought they knew more than I did.
My parents were desperate on Margaret’s behalf…her husband couldn’t cope with her illness, and she would have nothing to do with them, she only wanted me. For two years, I flew back and forth between Charleston and Seattle…finding places/friends for my daughters to camp out with.
Closing in on the two year mark of Margaret’s cancer, family finances were devastated as she had not had health insurance when the cancer arrived, and she had had so many surgeries and treatments that she was now wheel chair bound and losing hope. Her driving motivation had been her boys…and her lifelong dream wish had been to see whales in Alaska. My father pulled out the stops….he and my mother took care of the boys, and he flew me to Vancouver where I met Margaret and we flew together to Alaska. Together, bundled in blankets on the deck of the ship we scanned the waters for a week….no whales in sight. I told her stories, I read to her, I lay down in bed with her, I held her and our souls knew the jig was up.
On August 10th we sat on a dock, waiting to be picked up and taken back to Seattle and she told me that she was not going to eat any more. She couldn’t do this any more. I flew back to Charleston, she went into hospice, and on August 21st she left. My mother, her heart broken so many times in all of this, had stayed in Seattle…and when she arrived at hospice on the day, ten minutes after Margaret had passed, there was a red rose on the pillow where she had been.
Roses come into my life, as well as very specific music, whenever Margaret feels like saying ‘hello’.
And one day we will have tea and catch up.