Sister Week

(TESNOBEN Alert! Not for the faint of heart)
Some of you may have noticed my Facebook status of late:

IT'S SISTER WEEK!!!!! If you have any SISTER who makes your life interesting and fun, is a blessing in your life and generally makes life worth living by being around, copy and paste this to your status.

Probably not a status statement that anyone would really be accused of needing an excuse for - especially considering the quite legitimate, all-embracing interpretation of sister (i.e., "sista"), that would include any significant female in my life (except maybe my mother?) - not to mention my sister-in-law, who is AWESOME and deserves a blogo-tribute of her own (despite her refusal, or at least reluctance, to read the way-too-long English entries of this blog). And yet, I do not tend to participate in anything reminiscent of chain letters, and was just about to share with the Facebook world how some nasty neighbor is using (i.e., stealing) our laundry detergent, the huge bottle of which we conveniently left in a box in the basement so as not to haul it up and down the stairs in addition to the triple load we (i.e., I) customarily struggle with. But then I saw this status and knew I had to copy-paste it (though I probably should have laid off on those excessive exclamation marks. That's what I call Chain-Letter Reminiscence).
Now even without the aforementioned interpretative permissiveness, it's not stretching the truth too far to say that I have a sister, and that she is around. Yes, N left me a lot of her nice clothes (she insisted I choose whatever I want while she was still alive, so we could all feel like she's giving them to me), which I do wear - because what's the point not to. And whenever I see something N would find interesting or funny or inspiring, I have to swallow to keep breathing at the same pace. This what-I-wore-blog - one of my favorites, perhaps because I think N would love the outfits here - I found this blog in the middle of the night when N was already in a coma, about 30 hours before she past away, and my first thought was "I have to show this to N!" And now, my mother is spending the week here with me, and every once in a while tears well in her eyes when she thinks how my sister is irrevocably gone. Interestingly, this recently happened in another clothing-related occasion, when we were both perusing the hangers at a huge and thoroughly-cool thrift shop.
I'm not sure having N constantly around with us - because hey mom, she is constantly with us and we are not in danger of forgetting her any time soon - makes life worth living. And I'm not trying to say that life is worth living because there's blogging and shopping and nice outfits to wear. NOPE. But it definitely tells us that there is no choice but to live. And this is probably what my mother feels heart-broken about, what actually makes life so hard. Here's how this onerous life-task translates in my head, sometimes all options simultaneously: a) But I DON'T WANNA go on living!!! Tough luck, sista. YOU HAVE TO. b) I've got a husband and grad school and things to do and to wear and to bake and that's pretty not-to-bad. OH NO I might be ok though TESNOBEN. Holy CRAP. c) (which is the worst) N was always pretty hard on me, and besides we haven't been living in the same country for the last 10 years, and never really were the let's-go-thrift-shopping-together-sista! kind of sisters, but I won't ever forget her because my parents will never get over this anyway HOLY CRAP I HAVE NO HEART.
I tend to prefer b) and aim to spend most of my emotionally-distraught time around that option because as an existentialist conclusion HOLY CRAP or a variation on that theme (say, SHIT HAPPENS) pretty much suits life as I see it, and without a doubt corresponds to how N lived her whole life and especially her last year: not afraid to die, spending her time exactly the way she wanted to, and imploring us to wear nice clothes and be merry. AMEN.