Macy's Parade Rest in Peace

This is going to be a hard holiday for me this year. When my sister was well and we all thought we were invincible, I would fly to her house after finishing work on Wednesday so we could cook together. Naturally, her being a chef, she would have done all the shopping already and have some of the stuff prepared. I used to beg her to wait for me, but she had these lists, and they were made in order of prep and they had to be accomplished so that everything could be turned out on time.

She was a master at cooking, she made everything look so easy and it was fun besides. We would be in our own little world in her big kitchen, laughing, listening to music and making fun of the dog, Reggie, waiting for a morsel of food to drop. The best was when he got a garlic clove. We couldn't go near him all day. The dinner time was the absolute best, with great friends and family, jokes, and telling old stories, and then, of course, the big napping and snoring during the afternoon digestion.

Last Thanksgiving, only one year after one of those memorable ones where she was running the entire deal, she was bedridden and unable to eat anything. She thought she might have felt well enough to come to my Dad's, just have something to eat, and go home, but she felt tired and needed to spend the day in his bed while the rest of us ate a somber dinner at the table, trying to convince ourselves we would get through this. My little sister slipping away from us and I could do nothing to stop the rock rolling down the hill.

On the back of my Ipod I had engraved, "It was grim. Move On." because, like now, I can relive this with gut-wrenching accuracy, and I cannot keep doing that. I am going to a house of laughter today, my extended family of dear friends with whom I share a history and shorthand of language and I will have fun because I am still here and I have to live for both of us.