My stomach churns as I check the time on my phone. 10:47. In six minutes it will have been one year. An entire year since my life was irrevocably altered.
10:53 PM. Just a time of the day to most. To me, it was the last minute in which I had a sister. I can still hear the screeching of tires. Smell the burning rubber. At 10:53 I had my sister. At 10:54…blackness. It was so innocent too and that’s what kills me. It’s not like we were fighting or at least silently hating each other the way siblings do. We were driving home after another one of our late night frozen yogurt runs, blasting the radio and singing terribly.
“I just want to wake up with amnesia!” she sang loudly.
“No that’s not how it goes, Jules! It’s ‘I WISH THAT I COULD WAKE UP WITH AMNESIA!’ “ I shouted above the stereo, laughing. If only I had known.
She laughed at her mistake. “I think I would know, this is my favorite band Noelle!” she said, clearly making fun of me. She briefly looked over at me in the passenger seat before returning her eyes to the road.
“Whatever!” I chuckled, rolling my eyes.
We continued on like that for a few more minutes, alternating between singing and laughing. Like I said, totally innocent. I looked at the clock on the dashboard. 10:53.
I wish I could tell you what happened next, but I only remember fragments. I remember the flash of headlights suddenly appearing. The sound of Juliet gasping as she thrusts her arm in front of me protectively. Tires screeching. The stench of gasoline and burning rubber. Then, nothing. Total darkness. Only one of us was unfortunate enough to wake up in a hospital room a few hours later. I never was one for good fortune.
I wish that I could wake up with amnesia…
Then came the funeral. Everyone dressed in black from head to toe, crying. Juliet would have hated it. She always preferred bright colors and lighthearted atmospheres. I sat in the front pew of the church, trying to comprehend the fact that my sister was laying in that ominous-looking black casket, while all I had to show from the accident was a bandaged head and broken arm. There had to have been at least fifty bouquets of flowers surrounding my sister. The irony made me nauseous. Enveloping my dead sister in life won’t restore the lack of it inside her.
And forget about the stupid little things…
I check my phone again. 10:50 PM. I sit cross-legged directly in front of her gravestone, the ground beneath me cold from the October air. It doesn’t bother me though. Over the past year I have grown accustomed to the numbing coldness that I have felt since waking up as an only child. I pull my beanie down over my ears anyway. It always made her laugh when I wore beanies.
“You’re such a little punk!” she’d laugh as she pulled the beanie over my eyes.
“Says the girl in the Blink 182 shirt!” I’d shoot back. It wouldn’t take long before both of us were in stitches, laughing at something that was only funny to the two of us.
Like the way it felt to fall asleep next to you…
I remember I used to pretend that I had had a nightmare just so I could crawl into bed with my sister. She would make up some crazy story to make me forget about my nonexistent nightmare. We would always end up laughing more than sleeping.
“Shhh! Mom’s gonna hear us!”
“I can’t hold it in!” I’d say, referring to the fit of giggles erupting out of me.
Eventually sleep would overtake us. I’d fall asleep listening to the nonsense that Juliet would mumble as she dreamt. She always was the first to fall victim to sleep.
And the memories I never can escape…
Someone must have come to visit her today; there are flowers placed innocently at the base of her gravestone. I know whoever it was meant well, but I just see it as mockery. I glare at the flowers in disgust as I pull out my box of cigarettes. I place one in between my teeth. “Sorry, Jules,” I whisper. She always hated cigarettes, but I smoked anyway.
“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” She yelled as she snatched the burning cigarette out of my hand.
“What? It calms me down,” I replied nonchalantly and shrugged. “Besides, it goes with my image,” I smirked.
“Does your image involve getting lung cancer?” She retorted, stomping out the cigarette. “Seriously, these things are going to be the death of you.”
That’s the idea.
I raise a lighter to the cigarette in between my teeth. I hear a ping coming from my phone. Everything freezes.
‘Cause I’m not fine at all…
It’s 10:53 PM. My eyes slam shut as the lighter slips from my shaking hands. Burning tears stream down my frozen cheeks. This is really happening. My sister has been gone for an entire year. I sit here, allowing the tears to erupt out of me the way laughter used to.
For the first time in the past year, I feel something in my chest. It’s like something is exploding inside of me. It’s the memories of my sister tearing through the wall of numbness that has enveloped me for three-hundred-and-sixty-five days. I’m finally…feeling. At once I’m crying over the loss of my sister while laughing at the memories I have of the two of us.
It’s weird and I don’t fully understand it, but in this moment I know that I’ll be fine someday. I had it wrong. Forgetting my sister won’t fix this. Nothing will. But allowing myself to miss her and reliving the memories is what will keep me going.
I place my box of cigarettes beside the flowers as I begin to play a new song.
I miss you. I miss you…
At 10:53 I lost my sister.
One year later at 10:53, I know I will be okay.
