I was eleven that day in September when brain cancer took my mother’s life. The truth surrounding her terminal illness, which had been diagnosed less than a year earlier, was kept secret.  As a group, my family was never one to dwell on, or even speak about, the emotional fallout from that decision.

My sister Clare, thirteen years older than me, stepped into the job of surrogate mother to the three youngest girls in our family of seven children. She had just graduated from college, moved out of our home in Westchester, New York to Manhattan, and found a job in publishing.  Clare returned home to cook dinner, attend our parent-teacher conferences, teach my sisters and me how to cook and take us shopping for clothes. Two months after our mother died, she managed to pull together a Thanksgiving dinner with Mom’s traditional dishes: roast turkey, stuffing, giblet gravy, creamed peas and onions, and mashed potatoes. Dad brought mincemeat and apple pies from the New York Athletic Cub.

In those early days, as I absorbed the shock, Clare showed up and took care of things without comment or question. My sister just seemed to know what needed to be done and did it. I remember, just after Mom died, she quietly slipped into my bedroom where I lay under the covers facing the wall and held up a B. Altman shopping bag.

“Look, I bought these dresses for you.  One white, one black and white, and one gray. Can you try them on?  I didn’t know which one would fit.”

I slid out of bed and pulled off my nightgown. Clare unzipped the gray dress and slipped it over my head.

She stood beside me as I looked in the mirror.  My world suddenly felt tinged with gray: the dress, and the air in the room, even the light bleeding through the closed window shades.

“You look so pretty. Why don’t you wear this one?”  she asked.

I nodded, but no longer recognized the girl in the mirror, because my old self, my mother’s beloved baby of the family, no longer existed.  Just like that, the gray wool A-line dress with scalloped cuffs and hem transformed me into the girl who needed a dress for the occasion of her mother’s funeral.

Clare, her shoulder-length brown hair newly streaked with blond highlights, and nails polished light pink, showed her determination and self-possession by keeping me from drowning in the same abyss as my father, who found his solace in scotch and silence.

For the first several months, each night, she’d sit on my bed until I fell asleep. I’d pull my blue plastic rosary from my bedpost and roll the beads between my fingers as she read Cheaper by the Dozen aloud. When that went on too long with my eyes still wide open, she’d ask me to close them and imagine floating on a fluffy, white cloud in a blue sky or maybe try counting sheep. Her body, outlined in the shadow of darkness, was made real by her quiet, steady voice and the scent of Shalimar perfume mixed with cigarettes. It took hours for my body to surrender at night, but Clare stayed until I fell asleep.  My sister continued to focus her energies and work through her grief by keeping our family together.

Silence seeped into my bones and became the way for me to feel safe in the world.  I had nothing to say, nothing to add.  If anyone asked, “How are you?”  I’d freeze and shut down because a new, uncertain world kept me fixed in the moment I learned my mother was dead.  Having lost the grace of a carefree childhood, nothing made sense as I fought to bring my new world into focus. No matter how hard I tried, everything remained a blur.

It was easier to be silent, not express my thoughts or ask any questions.  Yet, inside my head, all I had were questions. Where did my mother go?   Why was everything about her sickness a secret?  Why couldn’t I say goodbye?

Clare was the first adult who helped me break that silence and share my experience around our mother’s death. She’d invite me to spend the weekend at her apartment, away from home with its constant reminder of Mom’s absence. By giving me space to speak about the unspeakable and be vulnerable, a bit of light began to seep into the dark hole that had become my world.  Through that tiny crack, I began to search for the deeper meaning of love and loss in my life.

Our relationship steadied me through the rocky years of adolescence and early adulthood.  Clare came to the hospital for the births of all three of my babies. She showed up with handknit baby sweaters, home-cooked meals, bottles of wine and parenting advice. She and her husband were parents to a four-year-old daughter and a new baby boy when my first son was born. My sister took motherhood with ease, free from the kind of worry that haunted me. My maternal instincts had found a home in my lifelong habit of vigilance, like a continual prayer to keep my baby safe.  My angst was obvious to Clare, but to me, it was the only way I knew how to function as a new mother without my own to guide me. My fearfulness frustrated her, and she had no patience for my anxiety.  “Get over it,” she’d say. “You won’t break him.”

I wish I could say I was special, but it wasn’t just me Clare showed up for, she did that kind of thing for all the people she loved.  From her, I learned that showing up to share all the parts of our lives—the weddings, the funerals, the births of our babies, and our annual family Christmas party—is the meaning of family.

At fifty-two, Clare was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer. She was the same age our mom had been when she was diagnosed with brain cancer. I received my sister’s call in early January.

“I have news, and it’s not altogether good.” She said.  “My mammogram came back with a small mass on my left breast and a macrocalcification on the right.  I’ll need a surgical biopsy before they know my prognosis.”

Silence, that immediate response and my lifelong protector, kept me frozen in the moment.  Then I took a long breath.

“I’m in this with you.”

The biopsy found cancer in both breasts and lymph nodes. From the beginning, I understood the meaning of stage IV breast cancer.  The cancer had metastasized, spread to untreatable parts of her body. There is no stage V.

She fought the disease for nine years. When her body could no longer withstand the constant assault of drug therapies, my sister made the decision to stop treatment.
When that time came, I struggled to absorb the words stop treatment. My brain couldn’t process the harsh reality. During what turned out to be the last three weeks of her life, as her body shut down, I immediately went to my sister as she’d always done for me.  At first, I doubted that I’d be strong enough to help in the final stages of her illness but put aside my fears to be fully present for her. I began to understand the difference between physically showing up and showing up with my entire self.  Fluffing pillows, changing the sheets, and keeping order are one level, but the willingness to be honest and vulnerable to the entire range of feelings that needed to be expressed is another.

I had tended to fall into the safe space of bottling up my emotions, hoping to normalize the unbearable. In that way, I’d lose myself and create more isolation. I came to realize that some situations can’t be overcome or soothed with a positive twist or by compartmentalizing.   Showing up for my sister required bravery and empathy to share the weight of our despair. It meant listening and giving of myself, no matter how frightened or overwhelmed I’d become. It took a kind of honesty that my father couldn’t muster. He was incapable of looking into the eyes of his wife and children to tell us that she was going to die. So, our family was left in a void.

At the end, Clare’s beautiful, thick hair, black Irish olive complexion and vibrant energy were gone. The cancer had done what it set out to do. Yet, we seized moments during those last weeks to reminisce and ponder how the past formed the women we’d become.

In one of our last conversations, I talked to Clare about Mom’s death.

“After Mom died, I felt the constant tug of another catastrophe just waiting to happen, like the other shoe was about to drop.  To feel safe, I learned to watch carefully and not speak out, that way I could hide in my private isolation. I kept my head down and my voice quiet.” I said.

“Look, you’ve built a beautiful life with a good marriage, three fabulous kids, and you do important work with your teaching. You need to get to know yourself better and learn to see yourself as the world sees you,” she said.

I took a breath and felt her words settle. So, this was it, she was telling me to dig deeper, that I didn’t have to live in constant fear, trying to hold things together.

“You’re stronger than you think. If you can do this, you can do anything,” she said.

She saw a strength in me that I couldn’t see in myself.

The greatest gift I could give Clare at the end of her life, was to hold space for her in those moments of unbearable sorrow.  I felt her body calm and begin to settle when I lay beside her, sometimes without speaking, just a steady breath and quiet music. In her lucid moments, I was able to talk to her with the kind of love and openness she’d always shown me. She’d taught me a way of being present without needing to be noticed, appreciated, or reciprocated, which I’ve come to understand as the meaning of true connection.

She had let me show up for her, totally open to being cared for like a newborn.  Those changes in her seemed to come from a place of power rather than victimhood.  That was a huge lesson for me: if I could live my life by letting go from a place of power, it would become more peaceful and fulfilling.  That release would open space for love and acceptance.

I recognized a softening around the edges as my sister became willing to let go.  She didn’t need to be the strongest person in the room anymore, and she’d hinted for me to do the same.
In her final days, Clare’s skin turned sallow and gray with a tinge of yellow because her liver was no longer doing its job.  She struggled to stay with me as she mumbled, fading in and out of her morphine dreams.  Did she still have access to the memories of our shared past, or were they being erased?  I wondered.

Clare’s body became capable of less and less.  The drugs induced a dream-like state of confusion punctuated by lucid moments of conversation.

I sat on the bed beside her and smoothed the bedcovers around her body. The oxygen tank kept a steady hum. A brittle silence took up all the empty space in the room.

I didn’t think she felt my presence until she began to mumble.  I leaned close to her lips as she garbled a few unintelligible words.

Then, as clear as if she was wide awake, she said, “There’s no need to make fresh blueberry pancakes every day.”

“What did you say, honey?” I asked.

“There’s no need to make fresh blueberry pancakes every day.”

“You’re right, there’s really no need.”

“Just eat them,” she said.

I watched her lips closely, but that was it.

I felt her slipping away again as she let out a sigh that faded into silence.

I sat still and waited for more, but she’d left me, again.

What did that mean?  Was she simply dreaming of blueberry pancakes?

Was she telling me I didn’t need to try so hard?  The way to live a fulfilling life is to have the confidence to not always try, and just be?

If I could penetrate my grief and not bury my feelings, I might become the kind of person, like my sister, who’d create a safe place for myself and others to share our insights around loss and healing.

There in Clare’s final words, I’d found my way, once again, into that tiny crack of light in our search for the deeper meaning of love and loss.

As she said, “If you can do this, you can do anything.”

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