Life Six Years Ago - Part One

Six years ago I lost someone who was very special to me. As in most cases you don’t really realize just how important someone or thing is until they are gone and you realize the gap that is left in your life from that point forward. It was a sudden occurrence. Something that was completely unsuspected and no warnings were given at all. I would like to say it was a terrible accident and in some strange way a bit of myself could possibly blame the tragedy of such an act on something or someone else yet it was not.

It was like any other August day, hot and eventful. I had spoken to my sister the night before as we had done on most Sunday evenings before the start of the next week. We would discuss our prior week and also the week to come and what wonderful things we had in store. At this time in our lives the events that came about were not necessarily the most wonderful; which made the conversations even that much more meaningful. She had recently gone through a rough divorce with a man that I know she still was very much in love with. As with any breakup of a relationship it was a long story. She had not taken the whole ordeal well and struggled with many of the aspects of the results of such a mess.

She had not been feeling good as of late yet she wrote much of her strain and stress off to the remnants of the ordeal she was going through. Yet the last week she was even more tired and lacked the energy to even do the simplest things. Yes, depression can do such things to you we both knew yet it seemed that possible there was something else that may be occurring and it would not hurt for her to have herself checked out just for safety purposes. She had made an appointment with the doctor the following Monday and was giving me the details. We chatted further about other trivial matters then promised to speak the next evening.

Of course all the usual things were spoken between us. The promises were made to call the next day; as well as the I love yous. The next day went as usual. I went to work and had a typical Monday morning, slow to start and blah as most Mondays were. I remember taking work home that evening because the day was so busy. I was working on my “homework” when I received the phone call. It was from my mother. Now a phone call from my mother was unusual in itself as she is not one to call out of the blue. I picked up the phone and the voice I heard on the other end was shaky to say the least. She kept saying my name yet nothing else.

Eventually another person came on the phone and simply said the words, Rosie is gone she is not with us no more. I did not know what to say and the coldness of the person who gave me the news that my oldest sister had just passed struck me like a 2 x 4 being swung up against my head. I asked for details yet the cold response continued. My mother was in no shape to discuss any of the current developments so I was simply left with she is gone. As I hung up the phone I sat in silence, dumbfounded and alone.

I had attempted to call my sister earlier on my way home from work to talk about the results of her dr. visit as I drove home yet received no answer. I assumed that I could chat with her later in the evening and get all the details then. That possibility was no longer there anymore.

I would later find out that she had gone to the doctor for her appointment yet never made it in to see him. On her check in with the receptionist, she had gone to the bathroom before she went in to see him. She was found some time later passed in a restroom stall. She had been there for some time and at the immediate time of her discovery it was unsure of what her cause of death was. It would be months before we found out that she was riddled with cancer inside and all of it had finally caught up with her. I think also that because of many of the things that had transpired in her life (the divorce especially and the loss of the man she truly loved) had left her with a feeling of no longer wishing to fight.

Did she know about any of this? No one really knows if she did. If she did she never let on to any of those around her; not to her friends, family, ex husband, or even her four grown boys. Yet Rosie was a fighter and someone who would not have troubled others with her tragedy especially if it were something that she felt would have brought them down or worried them; even more still if it were something that there was nothing that could have been done about it.