-
From the Archives: Look Good in the ER
Looking at my sister is like looking in the mirror. The shape of her eyes, drawn down just a bit on the ends, and the curve of her mouth when she smiles are just two of the many physical similarities we share. As a kid, it grated on me that people thought we were twins. “I’m older,” I’d reply, indignantly. But we were always close, joined together by love and also by the difficulties of growing up in a house with a very ill parent. When our mom died, we grieved together even if we didn’t know exactly how to go about it. I’d been away at college for much…
-
A Hug, Finally
I didn’t hug my dad for a year. I know this made me no different from millions of Americans my age. Our elderly parents, many in their 70s and 80s, spent the year celebrating holidays alone and zooming into family birthday parties. My dad was no different, and while he had kept me safe for many years, it was now my turn to protect him. It was a drastic change for my family, and especially my kids, who had grown accustomed to living with their grandfather. But it was what was best, I told them. Still, it was hard on everyone, especially because of the role my dad had played…
-
On Details and Memory
I was talking with my sister the other day. We were trying to remember some things about my mom. When did she get sick? When did we know? When was it obvious to other people? We could remember the basics: that she had depression our entire lives, that it got worse when we were young teenagers, that by the time we were both in high school she rarely got out of bed. But the other details were hard to remember. What year did we take the last trip together as a family to the mountains? Three years before she died? More? You would think we would remember everything – she…
-
The Vaccine
I saw the text and immediately started crying. “I got the vaccine!” It was from my sister Lindsay. I called her immediately. She was smiling and I was laugh/crying with relief as we spoke. Her baby girl was sitting in a high chair, cramming pancakes in her mouth, and my kids came over to say hello and do a cheer. The vaccine! I wasn’t expecting her text, even though Lindsay is an emergency room nurse in a busy urban hospital. Even though she spends much of every 12-hour shift with confirmed Covid-positive patients. Even though she wanted the vaccine as soon as it was available. I had called her the…
-
Fierce Loyalty
When my mom died, my dad couldn’t face cleaning out her closet. I was just 19, and so it didn’t fully make sense to me why the closet had more meaning than any other space. I volunteered to do it, and along with my sister Lindsay and our childhood friend Marcie, I went through my mother’s clothes. It was a quiet process, which is my lasting memory. Marcie took things out of the closet and my sister and I sorted through them. My sister, always meticulous, folded the clothes that we were going to keep. I don’t remember much else. I do remember that Lindsay and I talked very little…
-
Front Lines
My sister Lindsay is an ER nurse. And let me just state the obvious: Right now is not an easy time to be an ER nurse. The other day, she called as she was leaving work, clearly exhausted. She lives on the West Coast and works the night shift, so we usually talk when it’s mid-morning for me and she’s traveling home. I asked her about how things were going and we discussed how hard her shifts had become, how they were making tough decisions about testing or not testing potential cases of COVID-19, and the shortage of masks. Lindsay doesn’t sugar coat things, and she acknowledged that without the…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
