The legacy of Thanksgiving 1981

It’s been 25 years.

Twenty-five years since I stood up in the small church I attended in Fredericksburg and told the members of the congregation I needed a ride to New Jersey for Thanksgiving.

My sister Louise was dying of cancer, but I don’t think I told them that. I was 19 years old, in my second year of college, and I wasn’t ready to speak that truth out loud. Still, what my mind couldn’t say, my heart knew.

When my mother told me my sister wasn’t up for the trip to Virginia for Thanksgiving, I vowed to find a way to be with her instead. And thus even though I was the shy type, I stood and placed my need in front of everyone in the church. After the service, two or three people offered to help me.

I’m ashamed I don’t remember the name of the family that turned out to be the answer to my prayers, but I have never forgotten their kindness. They packed me and my suitcase into their overcrowded car for the trip north, wedged in the back with their two children. They were warm and welcoming but blessed me by not asking too many questions.

My sister Louise lived in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and her husband agreed to meet me at Paramus Mall and drive me back to their house. It was dark when I got to the mall, and in the days before cell phones, I had to find a pay phone to use to call him. It was late, and I was nervous.

When Jim showed up, he loaded my bag into the car and tried to brief me on Louise’s condition but nothing, absolutely nothing, prepared me for what I saw when I got to the house.

My sister looked like she’d stepped out of a concentration camp, her skin gray, her face skeletal and misshapen, her head covered with tufts of fine hair that she usually hid under a wig. She was on the final leg of a horrific journey.

About three years earlier, doctors had discovered a large, malignant tumor nesting in her sinuses, threatening to encroach on her eyes and brain. They’d operated on it by accessing her sinuses through the roof of her mouth. In that initial surgery, she not only lost most of the tumor, she also lost an eye, half her top teeth, and part of her palate.

My dark-haired, dark-eyed sister, the one who looked a lot like Marlo Thomas, wore an eye patch and a dental prosthetic afterwards. Because of nerve damage to her face, she worried about drooling, but even with one eye and a slightly crooked smile, she was still beautiful--and fun-loving enough to dress as a pirate on Halloween.

But when I saw her in the fall of 1981, every last shred of her beauty and health was gone. She was in the process of going deaf, the vision in her remaining eye was very blurry, and the eye itself didn’t sit right in the socket. Her forehead was lumpy, and I could almost smell the decay the cancer was causing. She could still walk and get around a bit, but she could never get or stay comfortable for long. At that point I think the cancer was moving into her spine.

I was devastated by her condition and unprepared for what would be the longest long weekend of my life. I didn’t know what to do or what to say or how to celebrate Thanksgiving with my dying sister. I only knew I had to be there, though I felt I wasn’t much use.

I was too young to know the rituals of the sick, too shell-shocked to rise to the occasion. Mercifully the years have erased most of the memories, though the ones that remain haunt me.

I remember collapsing in tears in a stairwell and sobbing because Louise was in a lot of pain and had begged me to get Jim, and I couldn’t find him.

Unbeknownst to me, her house had a finished basement and Jim had an office tucked down in a remote corner of it. When I didn’t find him in the main living areas, I assumed he was gone, and I went to pieces in the face of her agony and my helplessness. I didn’t know what to do; I was afraid to go upstairs and tell her he was gone. When he popped up a short while later and told me he’d been in his office in the basement, I felt foolish but relieved.

The Saturday night after Thanksgiving, I remember sitting with Louise in her den watching the movie Miracle on 34^th Street. The blue glow of the TV screen illuminated her face, and when I glanced over at her in the dark, I saw a single tear making its way down her cheek from her eye.

Was she crying for herself, for her husband, for me? How could we carry on with the knowledge that despite endless prayers, there wasn’t going to be any miracle in Ridgewood, New Jersey, that holiday season?

I left on Sunday, quietly shutting the door behind me. Standing outside her Dutch colonial house with the stone sidewalks and wood shutters and ivy climbing the chimney, I thought of all the pain and horror hiding behind those charming walls, and I was secretly relieved I could step outside of it.

Sitting in the back of the taxi that would take me to meet my ride home to Virginia, I pondered how the meter could put a price on time and distance.

That was the last time I saw her.

I rode back to school in silence, cradling my anguish, wondering how I could possibly set foot back on campus and spend time with people whose greatest concern was getting through finals and finding a date for New Year’s Eve. I thought about E and our upcoming wedding and wondered how I could embrace all the good things in my life while she lost everything.

As with most life-changing experiences, the legacy is in the questions, not the answers. I carry them with me like a smooth stone in my pocket, worrying them with my fingers: Do I appreciate what I have? Am I grateful for each day in the world? Am I compassionate in the face of suffering? Am I truly thankful for the gift of health?

Are you?

November 16, 2006

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com.

Comments

[Flubberwinkle]

I am grateful for the gift of life.

My compassion however makes me wonder if the gift of life I've been given (so far) isn't depriving it from someone who might offer more to this world or make a bigger difference...

I'm sorry for your sister and I'm sorry you were burdened with such a heavy legacy so young.

[Mary]

Wow, you just knocked me on my proverbial you-know-what with that story from your life, V-Grrrl. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. I know I will be thinking about it for a long time to come.

[Annie]

I have two sister and, even at 35, can't imagine the pain of loosing either one of them. I think your sister must have been grateful and honored that you chose to spend that Thanksgiving with her and her pain rather than ignoring her situation. Not every 19 year old would have had the grace and compassion to make that choice.

[TB]

I do not know many people who have been so able to take lessons away from the tragedies of their lives V. Most people can't see past the anger, bitterness, wallow in the unfairness, fail to see how they must learn or die themselves.

You do it all with such grace, you humble me.

[Kim H]

Wow.
I'm sitting here with tears falling on my cheeks. You've written a beautiful post on such a difficult memory. Thank you for sharing it.
Kim

[Shirley]

I don’t know how to adequately respond. I can’t imagine how deeply you feel the loss of your sister even after 25 years. I know without a doubt that your sister was very grateful for that last Thanksgiving you had together. You did a very brave thing stepping outside your comfort zone to hitch a ride and visit your sister in such terrible circumstances. Cancer is a brutal killer. We lost my father-in-law to cancer almost 3 years ago and I still remember how we lost him a little at a time, but yet seemingly overnight. I have no doubt there was the smell of death on my last visit to him--just a few hours before he died. It was a terrible loss and obviously much worse for my husband, but the thought of going through such a tragedy with my own sister is unbearable. Thank you for sharing your story. I am counting my blessings right now.

[deezee]

This is one of the most beautiful things I have read in a long time. Please send it to some U.S. papers in time for Thanksgiving and GET IT PUBLISHED. It's time we think about what really matters around Thanksgiving beyond pumpkin pie and stuffing. Sitting down to a gathering with your words in one's head would make that person that much more grateful. Thank you.

[Di]

A stunning piece of writing.

[Tink]

This post just made me bawl in my coffee, a totally unexpected reaction. Is it possible to miss and hurt for someone you never even knew? Or am I simply putting a different face on the situation? I can't imagine being in her place, or yours at that moment. Not that I haven't experienced horrible and tragic things. But your writing just brought this one home.

[Debbie]

I don't know what to say other than you have touched me to the core today.

[Nance]

It is so rare that we are called upon as sisters to be brave. Yet, it is a powerful strength because we draw it from each other.

Your gratitude for your life is palpable. A promise made and kept in honor of your sister.

[amber]

Oh, I'm just so sorry. No one should have to suffer that. And your pain hurts me. I wish it never was. It breaks my heart.

What a good question...

You know, there is a blog I read, "Left-Handed Trees". C.Delia is putting together an anthology of stories about losing a sibling. You can find th elink on her blog...You should check it out. I think people could really relate and moved by anything you could say.

ox :)

[Ernie Jo]

I remember Aunt Louise at Thanksgivings and Christmases-- intimidating because she wore an eye-patch, but gentle and beautiful, too. I was so young when she died, maybe 6 years old, but I remember praying at her closed casket with Daddy.

As I read your experience, I sobbed, imagining what it would be like to lose either of my sisters that way, and feeling, in a small way, the anguish you (and all of your surviving siblings) must have endured. Thank you for sharing. What you did that Thanksgiving was a beautiful tribute to compassion.