Day 91 of 100 intentional, reflective steps.

Just before the ball dropped the world stopped. Just for a minute but it stopped. Two years ago at 11:50 the phone call that I had expected for 10 years arrived from Texas. My sister, emaciated, sick, drug addicted, had succumbed to death. Dead. She was dead. In fact she had been dead for hours. Those hours while we celebrated the ending of the year and anticipated the next she was dying. Alone and dying, just as I always suspected she would be. The years of her illness and addiction had hammered hope out of me that she would die of natural causes. I never imagined that she would die with friends and family by her side. I had resigned myself to the knowledge that she would alone and desperate in her death. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. And here we were. 

I miss her terribly. But the truth is I began accepting her death years ago when it became obvious how ill she was.  She rejected the people who really loved her and wanted to help her heal; physically, emotionally, and mentally. She built imaginary family who accepted her addictions and rejected reality of those who loved her.  Her new, imaginary life shrouded, embalmed her from real feelings and from truth. 

My reality is that I have no sister and except in the case of my catastrophic demise, I will be the last of my family alive. Sobering. Real. Truth. Sometimes I hate the truth.