I gave into the urge to look at the Facebook page of my dead sister.
I’m not even sure what it is I’m expecting to find. My dad left the last post: a message that she had died. There are no likes. No comments.
I had the urge to send her a Facebook message. I don’t expect she’d respond, but some small part of me, the part that believes in magic, hopes she would get the message.
But then, what would I say?
That my seven-year year old daughter wants to talk about what happened? That I have a hard time explaining it to myself, let alone a child, why she made the choices that she did. That I’m still so angry and sad at the same time?
When my daughter says, “Why didn’t she talk to family.” I have no answer. So we talk about how it can be scary to talk about personal things with family and friends. How embarrassment or pride can keep you from reaching out.
And then my daughter asks, “Did she reach out?”
No, she didn’t. Not really. Not in the way my daughter means. She was never really interested in getting better.
What I don’t say to my daughter, is that there’s fear when you’ve lost someone. Maybe the family didn’t try hard enough.
Maybe I didn’t try hard enough.
All I’m left with is a FaceBook page of a dead sister who didn’t try to change and the hope that maybe my sister’s death can help me give guidance to my daughter.
So my daughter doesn’t one day become an empty Facebook page.
Powerful, and heartbreaking. She has found peace at last, and will help you protect your daughter.
Thank you, teuliano. I hope that we can figure out what goes wrong in these cases and can some day make such things not happen. I’d rather have my sister, than a life lesson for my child.
The only thing that words can change is what might be, not what is or what was. You might now have taken this specific chance to tell her what you felt, but I suspect you’d already tried that on many days in many ways and communication requires a minimum of two people.
I’m sorry this didn’t close in a better way and no words will change that. All I can offer is an objective point of view suggestion to x-ray your self-blame at not trying hard enough for fault lines of prideful ideas about how much influence you really had over the outcome.
It does feel like another nature/nurture argument. Or wondering if a butterfly wing causes a storm. I know there is nothing I can do since the past is the past. To your point, I’m not sure I really could’ve changed anything. But I still hope to learn lessons for the future. Thanks constantreader.
I am SOOOO sorry for your loss. There are times that I also wish for magic. I would love to talk to my mother about my son. My mom passed away two years before he was born and there are so many questions I would like to ask her about being a mom and whatnot. HUGS to you and yours!!!
Thanks Juli. I’m sorry about your mom. Kids are so hard sometimes. It would be nice to have someone to ask questions. Or even offer to babysit when you need a break. 🙂 Take care.