“What do you think is harder,
the death days or the birth days?”
Her and I contemplated quietly,
Before agreeing that for us,
it’s the birth days.
A death day, for me,
requires one action alone:
just get through it.
No expectations.
No plans.
Most often, instead,
I fill it with distractions.
Anything that’ll keep me
From watching the clock
Tick down the hours
That she had left.
Anything to not let myself
be overtaken
by the potent horrors,
Of where I was,
And where I wasn’t.
But a birth day, is different.
Rachel and I were both
June babies. Gemini twins.
Three years and one week apart.
Our birthdays were pool parties,
Pink lemonade, and confetti cakes.
But that was then,
And here we are again, now
June 14th. Rachel’s day.
Most often I’m told by others,
That I should use this day
To “remember” her.
To “honour” her.
To “celebrate” her life.
But most often I find myself thinking:
“wouldn’t it be helpful If it were that simple”
If it were possible, for me,
To decouple her life.
From her death.
To pause after the hyphen.
To create just enough space.
To be able to celebrate.
But instead,
I wake on Rachel’s birth day;
With so much distance between
what I used to feel, and what is now, real.
And so, as a result,
instead of wide eyes
and stretched smiles
I wake
With scattered emotions.
Caught in a whirlwind of opposites.
Flinging me back-and-forth,
Stretching me senseless,
between impossible ends
of a spectrum
That I so dearly wish
Didn’t exist.
Because what is there
to celebrate about being
One week
And three years
Turned four years
Turned five years
Turned six years
Apart.
Another year,
where I’m moving forward,
But she is frozen in time.
Another year, where I face the reality,
that my Sister didn’t get to grow
A year older, with me.
