The Things I Brought You
Never Forgive You: Chapter 3
Before chapter 3 begins, I hope you’re enjoying this exclusive first look at my book. Each chapter title is inspired by a song on the soundtrack of the grief of losing a sister so young. At the end, you’ll find the link to listen to the song.
My Camry cut through the snow like the Millennium Falcon accelerating into hyperspace. I was driving to Jackson for the weekend, to care for Ruthie and the kids, giving Andrew a bit of a reprieve. At the big-box store just off the exit, I stopped to stock up on ingredients to make meals. I piled beets, tomatoes, garlic, onion, quinoa, and pasta into my cart. I’d leave them with the kind of healthy food meant to offset cancer, the kind that makes meat eaters hate vegetarians like me. Michaela had been there a couple of weeks earlier and called to suggest I restock their freezer with some easy meals for Andrew to thaw and bake.
I’d learn, looking back, that my first failure was in comfort food for hard times. Make macaroni and cheese.
Second failure? Policing their eating. A few beets wouldn’t cure her cancer, any more than the “have you tried kale?” advice she kept getting. Even worse, I’d learn later, beets could be distressing. Once, a few months after Ruthie died, I made David drive me to the ER. “I might be bleeding from my rectum, and my sister died of rectal cancer,” I told the nurse. One test and a rectal exam later, the ER doc asked what I had eaten the day before. Oh, yeah. The canned beets. That can, I realized later, cost a couple of thousand dollars.
That weekend, attempts to overturn the ACA were languishing in hearings, another writer had scooped me at the Post, and Ruthie’s surgery was scheduled for the following week. After my run, we lingered in the kitchen, me clutching a cup of chai, trying to stay focused on her, in spite of the discouraging flaws of her run-down flat. One cabinet door was awry, another gone. Drawers hung lopsided. Tile was peeling off the floor, broken in spots. How did this not drive her nuts? Our mother had been fastidious, to a fault, about cleanliness and repairs. None of us was as punctilious, but most of us would have called the landlord for repairs of this magnitude.
“I won’t be attractive.” She palmed a mug of tea and leaned against the sink. To remove her tumor, she’d have an ostomy, at least temporarily. “I said yes because they said it could be temporary.” That surprised me.
“I just heard a podcast on anal sphincters,” I told her. She guffawed, one of her big laughs. “Yes, I know. I said something Beavis would laugh at. But seriously, they’re miraculous but also more complicated than we realize. Like, did you know that they can tell the difference between liquid, solid, and gas? Somehow they know when it’s safe to fart without accidentally pooping.” Mostly. I had my own digestive problems. “Although I did have that one embarrassing disaster during the mini-marathon that James and I were running.” I’d somehow finished thirteen miles but visited at least ten port-a-potties along the route. She learned later, in a way that almost killed her, that human-made sphincters couldn’t compete with nature’s.
“What’s on the docket today?” I asked.
“I’m going to let you do the writing of my life. I tried to write letters to the kids, but I can’t find the words.” So we went to Michaels, where she scooped up scrapbooking items into the cart: archival-quality paper samples patterned like all the fabrics in the sewing section, elaborate stickers, punch-hole tools, and beveled paper frames.
She put over $200 on her credit card. I know she and Andrew couldn’t afford it. I wanted to cover it, but I couldn’t afford either. She was paying the piper for her kids to learn her life’s song.
While Andrew and the kids napped, Ruthie dumped the bags on the floor, and we spread them out. I took acid-free ink roller pens out of their packages and organized them into the carrier. We flipped through patterned paper and tore the cellophane off her stickers.
“So, I’m going to write your story, but I still have to pitch this to my thesis adviser,” I told her. For some reason, that conversation terrified me. Aside from an idea of braiding essays about facing mortality and planning for death, I didn’t have a unifying concept. Ruthie wasn’t going to die, only face the possibility. Everything else that mattered would emerge, I told my advisor when I finally sought approval. It would all come together, I thought. Even before I obtained approval, Ruthie and I set up a cadence of interviews, aiming for weekly. Both of us thought she’d feel better than she did after radiation was over and her tumor removed.
“I can’t plan life five years from now. I can’t even plan for the next six months.” She bit her lip. That’s the chemo talking, I wanted to believe. But she made a point. Now was the time to start talking about how she wanted to die and how she wanted to be buried. I’d just listened to a podcast from a young widow whose husband’s untimely death left her scrambling to get all his shit together. After dealing with all the insurance, burial, and estate issues for her husband, she did the rest of us a favor. She put together a whole packet and was promoting the need for everyone to plan for the unexpected—and inevitable. When should I bring this up? After all, we’d just hosted a couple of funeral professionals at church who’d walked us through Indiana regulations and how to create a burial society. Now, I was spearheading those efforts for our congregation.
I decided to punt.
“Depression is a side effect of cancer. I think John Green wrote something like that in The Fault In Our Stars.” I’d sent her a copy of the book after her diagnosis, thinking she’d find an anchor in the story of another young person living with cancer.
“Yeah, I didn’t read the book. I don’t need more existential depression right now.
“Oh, right. Sorry. It’s got some lighter moments. I hoped...” A look flashed in her eyes. I realized I was digging in, rather than respecting what she wanted and needed.
That night, I rolled lavender oil on her couch because it smelled sour like ours had during the toddler days, a bit sweet like Pop-Tarts, a bit rank like diapers. I set the alarm on my phone for dawn to fit in some running before her kids woke up, and then I lay awake to worry. I might have promised far more than I could deliver. How, after all, could I capture a sibling whose formative years I mostly missed because I’d gone off to college and marriage?
I didn’t even know yet about the time she’d ended up in the ER with a pencil sticking out of her butt.