Without Saying Goodbye

Content Warning: This piece contains premature death and cancer.

If I’d known she was dying, maybe I would have been less annoying to her. I would have bugged her less, maybe even let her play with my hair. But there was no warning. She stayed home from school one day. She was dead before the next morning. When Mom told me, she was crying big, ugly tears that ran down her red face like glittering beetles. Mom blamed the cancer.

    “I thought the cancer was gone,” I replied, still not fully understanding why Mom was crying so hard, my brain still processing through a haze of sleep. Mom said nothing. By this time, she was crying so hard that she probably hadn’t even heard me at all. I hugged her a little, and tried to calm her down. The bedroom was still dark, and though the sky outside was lightening with the promise of morning, the sun refused to show its face. Maybe the sun was sad, too.

     Mom and I sat there for a while, and finally she told me that we should go to the hospital to say goodbye to my sister. I followed her out to the car, still wearing an old t-shirt and my favorite pajama pants (decorated with cats). Mom cried the whole way to the hospital. Her hands trembled on the steering wheel. I stared out the window, watching the sunrise with awe and nearly forgetting why we were up so early.

     When I remembered, I felt bad. How could I forget? Was this what grief is like? I tried to picture my sister’s face. I mapped out her freckles, her glasses, her short, wispy hair that had grown back after the cancer. It was nothing like the thick, wavy brown hair she’d had before. I realized that I couldn’t remember what color her eyes were. Lately, I’d only seen my sister when she was mad at me. She was thirteen, and everything my clumsy nine-year-old self seemed to do was somehow getting in her way. When she was made, her eyes got all squinty and it was hard to tell if they were hazel or brown or something else. I thought it was weird how I never really looked at her to memorize her face. Only to apologize for knocking over her lip gloss or interrupting her when she was hanging out with her friends.

     The car jolted, and the engine shuddered and died. I looked up, the hospital looming up before us like some gigantic creature that had swallowed my sister whole. Stupidly, I followed Mom in, taking in the all-to-familiar sights of the children’s area. I’d been coming here for years to visit my sister while she was in treatment. Now the farm animals painted on the walls passed by in a blur of voices as Mom and I were rushed through the halls. The reality was beginning to sink in as the glaring lights made me see spots. I kept hoping that I might still wake up from this nightmare.

     I never did.

     We arrived at the hospital room. Solemn-faced doctors and nurses put their hands on our shoulders, apologizing needlessly. We put on plastic gloves and hospital gowns. They opened the door. Mom took my hand and guided me in.

     The room was filled with the taste of death. The lighting was dim, but a few rays of sunlight peeked through the curtains. The sunrise had promised a beautiful day. Mom had gassed when we walked in, and now she was sobbing again. I followed her attention to the hospital bed, where my sister lay, peacefully sleeping on the sheets. She looked pale and small. I waited for her chest to rise and fall with her breathing, but it never did. Mom left my side and walked over to my sister, crying into her hand and whispering about her baby.

     Somehow, I managed to be selfish enough to silently correct Mom. I was her baby, not my sister. I thought that maybe I should go over to her like Mom did. Say I was sorry for always getting into her stuff all the time. Maybe I was supposed to hug her or something? I didn’t know what to do, and everything about that place was making me uncomfortable.

     I turned away and left the room without saying goodbye.

If I had known she was going to die, I would have been a better sibling. Now, I was older. Curled up on the couch with my fluffy tuxedo cat (my sister would have loved him), I was flipping through a photo album my mom had put together a few years ago. It documented the shared life between me and my sister. From the moment I was born, she was always right there at my side, grinning the crazy smile of a proud older sister.

     The mood changed when the pictures reached the cancer. Suddenly I was the one grinning, sitting in the hospital bed next to an unrecognizable kid with no hair and a thousand tubes sticking out of her. And then, the pictures that came in the years before her death. A smile flickered across my features as I watched my sister’s happiness becoming more forced as I, the energetic little sibling, hung from her arm or jumped on her back, dripping ice cream on her and spilling my barbeque sauce in her lap.

     Mom took another picture of us; one taken two days before she died. She looked exasperated, but for the first time in a long time, she seemed genuinely happy. We were squished together on the downstairs couch, having just finished her favorite cheesy movie. I was staring at something in the background (probably the end credits of the movie), and my sister had her arm slung around my shoulders. She was looking right at the camera, her cheeks a little flushed from the warmth of the fireplace, a huge grin on her face.

     I flipped to the last page, and as always, I was confused by the last picture. Mom had never given a clear explanation as to why she had put it there. It was a picture of me, the summer after my sister died. It was a beautiful sunset picture, depicting me as I lay on my back, alone, staring up as a flock of birds flew overhead, silhouetted against the orange sky. I had a wistful look on my face, and for some reason, I looked a lot older than I did in any of the previous photos. Like, years older when I had only aged a few months.

     For some reason, the picture began to blur before my eyes. I sniffed and wiped away my tears. It wasn’t the first time I had cried over my sister’s death, but it seemed like the first time I was actually missing her with my whole heart. I returned to my memories of the hospital room where I had seen my dead sister for the last time. I remembered my bewilderment.

     I remembered walking away without saying goodbye.

     The tears returned, and I didn’t wipe them away this time.

     I wish I had said goodbye.