Knit My Dog

Ten years ago today we said goodbye to my oldest sister. After a cruel and horrible week of her being in a coma due to a bleed in her brain, she was declared brain dead. I'll spare you the details of that week, but I think about it often. Sometimes it feels like yesterday and sometimes it feels like it happened in another life. Her name was Ruth Ann but a childhood nickname of Rootie stuck so she is forever Rootie to me.

Here we are probably a year or two before she died, the three sisters:

I'm in the middle, Rootie's on the right, and my other sister Julia is on the left.

It's hard to describe what her death has meant. There's a gaping hole in our family right where she should be. She was the oldest, and I am the youngest, of five siblings. There's only five and a half years separating us. So we're all close in age. And we're very close in spirit too. One of my friends commented once that she was surprised how much my family all liked each other. That we would actually be friends if we weren't related. I never really thought about it, but I do realize what a special bond we all have. And she was a vital part of our family dynamics.

Here are the five of us one Christmas morning:

She was an artist and an art teacher. I think she was born to teach. When I was little, she would have arts and crafts classes in our friend's back yard during the summer. We had a house on Cape Cod, so we were at the beach with plenty of distractions. Even on sunny days, the yard would be full of kids wanting to learn some crafts from her. When she died, she was a middle school art teacher. I got to read letters from her students and I was so touched by what they had to say about her and how she affected them. That was one thing about her being in the hospital for a week. We got to meet so many of her friends that we didn't know. Word went out that she was in the hospital, and people just showed up. We got to see how many lives she touched. Even after her death she touched some lives because we donated her organs. My parents have even been in touch with some of the recipients. I'm very proud of my parents for honoring her wishes to be an organ donor. They have even spoken for some organ donation groups encouraging others to sign up to be donors. It can't be easy talking about donating your daughter's organs, but I think it has helped them through all of this.

Alright, this post is making me cry and I can hardly type through the tears. My parents are having a memorial for her on Easter Sunday. My whole family and some of her close friends will be there. I'm still trying to come up with what I want to say, so this has been a great way for me to start thinking.

I'll leave you with one more shot. That's me and Rootie with our dog Taffy.