It’s been a month. At 11 o’clock tonight, it has been a full lunar cycle since my sister breathed her last breath and left this world… she left me.
I’m still in that bedroom with her though. Unfortunately, the last two years of her life, except for my wedding weekend, were contained completely within my mother’s house. So, that room is the center of my memories for the last couple years. It isn’t my memories that I’m still in though… not all the normal ones. Not her napping or her watching TV. It’s her body. I’m still in that room with her body as it cooled, stroking her hair, and wishing she would take just one more breath. I feel like I can’t leave that room because in that room is where I heard her voice last, is where she last breathed, and it’s where I last saw her face.
There is no explanation for how vivid my memories are. It’s as if I’m still hugging her, as if she is still crying over her impending death, as if I can still feel the dark coolness of those confines… of being in the bedroom that was hers since she was 12 years old. She spent almost two decades making that room hers and even now that she’s gone, it’s still her room and I feel stuck there in my memory and I don’t want to leave, no matter how painful it is to stay there.
It’s been a month. One full month and yet, I’m still there and nothing has happened since she stopped breathing… because I haven’t left and I’m still not ready for this: the world without her.