my sister

There are certain ethereal qualities that cannot be contained. They are elusive. They elude my grasp. They are smoke in solid hands. What happens to these qualities when the body to whom they belonged becomes nothing but ash? 

It isn't the loss of the physical that is so hard for anyone to deal with, it's the loss of her soul and spirit and the knowledge that we can't capture these things in the same way we can a concrete or physical thing. This is what makes losing her so hard. It's looking at a million photographs of her and knowing that nothing about a photograph captures her true essence. It's that feeling of being with her that can't be preserved. This is what pains me the most. If grief was hard before it's even harder now because it feels as though I have etched into my skin the harsh reality of losing her. 

Memories lack that wonderful fluidity of spending day after day with someone. Memories are too box-like, little squares of thought that penetrate my mind individually. They never allow for me to feel a feeling that was constant in my life. Growing up with someone means their continuous presence in your life. I will write whatever thoughts come to me. I don’t want to over think. I want to allow her, through my memories, to fill in the empty spaces that she left looking so bare. I want to let her to find her own way back to me. 

We used to play this game when we were little. Quite simply I named it “puppies and kitties and blocks”. We built a hotel out of blocks and the plastic cats and dogs would cause all sorts of trouble. Usually there would be new guests at the hotel and the ones that already lived there would play pranks on the newcomers. My mum would interrupt us and suggest we play something “nicer”. I remember vividly her suggesting one time that we have them put on a fashion show. My sister and I just looked at each other and laughed. 

There is a place that kids go, a whole other world. No one can penetrate the walls. No one else has a key to the door. Being kids together means sharing in this world that no one else has access to. I remember babysitting and trying so hard to get the game right that the kids were playing but I was an outsider, I was too old to be in touch with their imaginative minds. It’s not that I no longer had imagination, it’s just that kids are in an entirely different dimension.

Me and my sister could play for hours and hours. We made marbles talk. They all had personalities. When she got a bit older she came up with this genius idea. She wrote notes to me as a fairy named “Peach”. The first one came rolled up and tied to my toothbrush. I was absolutely ecstatic. I had my very own fairy! I had no doubt in my mind that this fairy was real. My sister wrote these notes for several years and I feel almost as though my happiness was what kept her heart beating. She wanted nothing more than to make her little sister happy.

We had a summer place on the Sunshine Coast. My dad gave us wheelbarrow rides around the garden and my sister was the tour guide. She would point out all the flowers but she always did it in such a funny deadpan delivery, it made me laugh so hard. One time she ran into the house and told me excitedly that she had just had a conversation with the one and only Fairy Queen! I was overjoyed but also a little disappointed that my sister got to talk with her and I didn’t. She told me the queen had told her she was leaving soon for Victoria and didn’t have time to meet with me. She gave me a “fairy quest”. I had to find a blue flower with no petals and leave it on the biggest rock. I did as I was instructed and when I returned to the rock later, the flower was gone and the queen had left a pile of nickels and dimes and a scribbled “thanks!” on a piece of paper. 

Once I got older I realized Peach the fairy wasn’t real, and neither was the Fairy Queen, and I naturally assumed that my parents had written the notes, but when I asked my mum about it she said it was all Maija-Liisa’s idea and that she had written all the notes herself. I saved them all; little pieces of my sister’s creativity stored in a cardboard box. 

Should I go back to the beginning and say that I was wrong? Maybe I can capture certain aspects of who she was. But it isn’t enough. It's never enough.