Existential Post Time!
Jul. 20th, 2010 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
azuriteFor the next half hour or so, it's July 20.
For those that don't know (yet), July 20 is the day my older half-sister Michelle Elizabeth Smith died (fuck euphemisms). She fell from a cliff near Lands End in San Francisco, CA, which I consider my hometown, because I grew up here. (Michelle, being my half-sister, grew up partially in New York and partially in California.)
She was 19, and a sophomore at the Academy of Art College (now the Academy of Art University), studying to be a film major. She was tall--at least six feet, I think--and had perfectly straight white teeth. She often did crazy things to her hair--dyeing it or chopping it off--but it was beautiful and I was envious of her blonde hair, because even if it was a "dirty blonde," I liked it a lot more than my plain ol' brown.
I was 11 when she died. I didn't understand a lot about life, much less about loss. I remember getting into a fight with her about something stupid not long before she died. I remember happily leaving the house that summer morning with my dad, who'd come to pick me up to go to Petaluma, where he lived, for the weekend. I remember the sky being a crystal-clear blue.
I remember walking into my dad's house after being out and him pressing the button on the answering machine only to hear screams--my mother's, saying something incoherent. But it was frightening, really frightening. But that was only the beginning of my first real taste of horror, to be perfectly honest with you.
I remember my dad telling me that my sister had been in an accident, and the first thought that popped through my head was that she'd been biking on some narrow path in Golden Gate Park, that she'd gone down this steep hill I remembered her admiring near the Rose Garden. I think she'd said it looked cool, but I thought it was dark and scary (and back then, I thought there might be bears there. Or maybe she told me there were bears there, and she, being fearless enough to bike through bear territory, was supposed to be cooler because of it). But then Dad said she hadn't broken her leg or sprained her ankle...she was dead. Really truly gone.
I didn't get it. It just didn't sink in, even after we drove back to my mom's house in absolute silence, in traffic that seemed to take even longer than usual just because. It didn't sink in even when I got to our house and found the dining room filled with cops and other people I don't even remember now. It was only when mom started sobbing into me that I realized this was Very Bad.
A lot of the rest of the day and time until Michelle's funeral was a blur. I do remember going up to her open casket and feeling the odd compulsion to grab her hand, to admire her pretty nails one last time. She always seemed to have this thing for comparing her art to mine, but I always thought she was the better one--her sketches in charcoal, her pen or pencil doodles, her watercolors, her poems. She played piano and guitar, and to this day, "Moonlight Sonata" and "Fur Elise" have special meaning to me because of that. I've never been a musician, never had her skill with fingers. Mine are truly crafter's hands, dingy and with flaky nails. But I grabbed her hand and felt how cold and heavy it was, and even more so than her mortician'ed up face (looked so wrong, not like her at all: all of it, more for us than for her, what does it matter?), I realized that she was gone.
Today I went to Lands End, but this time I didn't do anything stupid and go under the pathetically fenced-off part of Painted Rock where she supposedly fell, nor did I graffiti up one of those "PEOPLE HAVE FALLEN TO THEIR DEATHS HERE" signs with "YEAH, LIKE MY SISTER" or anything. Been there, done that. Guess the novelty wore off, or maybe I was just scared? I just sat near the junction of the stairs and the fence, talking to an old black and white photo of her while I listened to the ocean.
Some jerk-ass old jogger in blue shorts that were (ugh!) way too short interrupted me, but I think I said my piece, had my time. So what if some people saw and thought I looked weird? I guess the 20th is the one day when I really feel like if people have anything to say to me, anything they don't like, fuck 'em. It's the one day when I have to focus on something else, someone else, because nothing else matters.
Last night I did a Tarot reading for myself, on the lessons I've learned (should have learned?) from my sister. I think she really did teach me a lot, even in the short time I knew her. Fact is, I've known my best friends longer than I did my sister, and while the feeling hurts, I know I'm blessed to have such long-term friends, and I hope they stay that way. I'm equally blessed to have known my sister at all, for as long as I did, and to remember what little I do.
She's the one who introduced me to anime, to computers, to video games. I may have pissed her off because my dad's still alive and hers wasn't, or because I seemed to have it easier with friends, but an eight year difference will do that to any siblings, I think. I hope she really did love me, and that even now, wherever she may be, I'm making her proud. It's not that I have doubts in myself--I decided when I turned 20 that I'd live for myself, and not her memory, not to see if I would outlive my sister--but more like it's reassuring thinking that she's not entirely gone. I feel like I can't rely on my own memories to keep her alive, so I want there to be something extraordinary that's "her" too, even if I can't sense it.
I've been watching "Dead Like Me" lately, thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
schmollieollie and Adam's recommendation. They even have Season 2 (and the TV movie too, I hope) on Netflix. It's about this 18-year-old girl (George) who's pretty apathetic toward life, and then she dies, leaving behind her 11-year-old sister (Reggie), her crazy mom (Joy), and her cheating father (Clancy). She becomes a reaper, removing the souls of people right before they die. She's technically undead, still in a body, but with a different name (Millie) and a different face. She can't go back to her family, because aside from not understanding and it possibly causing chaos and panic, she would start to lose her memories of them. She has to keep reaping until the day she hits her unspecified quota, and then she moves on and someone new takes her place.
The similarities between George and Reggie and Michelle and myself are so eerie, and some of the episodes struck so close to home, I admit that I cried while watching them. I know it's just a show, and just a story, but it's a nice thought, thinking that maybe my sister's still out there, with some stranger's face, working some awful gig while she reaps souls to get her "quota." Or maybe she's part of someone's better quota and, even if Mom and I are still here, she's in a better place, where she's happy and at peace, with her dad and Grandma Alice and Grandpa Ed and everyone else.
Her death made me think I was so mature back then, but I didn't know what "maturity" was. I was pretty emo through high school, I know that, and maybe I am still now. Growing isn't something you stop doing at a particular age, and there's no maturity deadline. I guess I just want to make the most of what I have (what she didn't get to have) and keep learning, loving, and living.
For those that don't know (yet), July 20 is the day my older half-sister Michelle Elizabeth Smith died (fuck euphemisms). She fell from a cliff near Lands End in San Francisco, CA, which I consider my hometown, because I grew up here. (Michelle, being my half-sister, grew up partially in New York and partially in California.)
She was 19, and a sophomore at the Academy of Art College (now the Academy of Art University), studying to be a film major. She was tall--at least six feet, I think--and had perfectly straight white teeth. She often did crazy things to her hair--dyeing it or chopping it off--but it was beautiful and I was envious of her blonde hair, because even if it was a "dirty blonde," I liked it a lot more than my plain ol' brown.
I was 11 when she died. I didn't understand a lot about life, much less about loss. I remember getting into a fight with her about something stupid not long before she died. I remember happily leaving the house that summer morning with my dad, who'd come to pick me up to go to Petaluma, where he lived, for the weekend. I remember the sky being a crystal-clear blue.
I remember walking into my dad's house after being out and him pressing the button on the answering machine only to hear screams--my mother's, saying something incoherent. But it was frightening, really frightening. But that was only the beginning of my first real taste of horror, to be perfectly honest with you.
I remember my dad telling me that my sister had been in an accident, and the first thought that popped through my head was that she'd been biking on some narrow path in Golden Gate Park, that she'd gone down this steep hill I remembered her admiring near the Rose Garden. I think she'd said it looked cool, but I thought it was dark and scary (and back then, I thought there might be bears there. Or maybe she told me there were bears there, and she, being fearless enough to bike through bear territory, was supposed to be cooler because of it). But then Dad said she hadn't broken her leg or sprained her ankle...she was dead. Really truly gone.
I didn't get it. It just didn't sink in, even after we drove back to my mom's house in absolute silence, in traffic that seemed to take even longer than usual just because. It didn't sink in even when I got to our house and found the dining room filled with cops and other people I don't even remember now. It was only when mom started sobbing into me that I realized this was Very Bad.
A lot of the rest of the day and time until Michelle's funeral was a blur. I do remember going up to her open casket and feeling the odd compulsion to grab her hand, to admire her pretty nails one last time. She always seemed to have this thing for comparing her art to mine, but I always thought she was the better one--her sketches in charcoal, her pen or pencil doodles, her watercolors, her poems. She played piano and guitar, and to this day, "Moonlight Sonata" and "Fur Elise" have special meaning to me because of that. I've never been a musician, never had her skill with fingers. Mine are truly crafter's hands, dingy and with flaky nails. But I grabbed her hand and felt how cold and heavy it was, and even more so than her mortician'ed up face (looked so wrong, not like her at all: all of it, more for us than for her, what does it matter?), I realized that she was gone.
Today I went to Lands End, but this time I didn't do anything stupid and go under the pathetically fenced-off part of Painted Rock where she supposedly fell, nor did I graffiti up one of those "PEOPLE HAVE FALLEN TO THEIR DEATHS HERE" signs with "YEAH, LIKE MY SISTER" or anything. Been there, done that. Guess the novelty wore off, or maybe I was just scared? I just sat near the junction of the stairs and the fence, talking to an old black and white photo of her while I listened to the ocean.
Some jerk-ass old jogger in blue shorts that were (ugh!) way too short interrupted me, but I think I said my piece, had my time. So what if some people saw and thought I looked weird? I guess the 20th is the one day when I really feel like if people have anything to say to me, anything they don't like, fuck 'em. It's the one day when I have to focus on something else, someone else, because nothing else matters.
Last night I did a Tarot reading for myself, on the lessons I've learned (should have learned?) from my sister. I think she really did teach me a lot, even in the short time I knew her. Fact is, I've known my best friends longer than I did my sister, and while the feeling hurts, I know I'm blessed to have such long-term friends, and I hope they stay that way. I'm equally blessed to have known my sister at all, for as long as I did, and to remember what little I do.
She's the one who introduced me to anime, to computers, to video games. I may have pissed her off because my dad's still alive and hers wasn't, or because I seemed to have it easier with friends, but an eight year difference will do that to any siblings, I think. I hope she really did love me, and that even now, wherever she may be, I'm making her proud. It's not that I have doubts in myself--I decided when I turned 20 that I'd live for myself, and not her memory, not to see if I would outlive my sister--but more like it's reassuring thinking that she's not entirely gone. I feel like I can't rely on my own memories to keep her alive, so I want there to be something extraordinary that's "her" too, even if I can't sense it.
I've been watching "Dead Like Me" lately, thanks to
schmollieollie and Adam's recommendation. They even have Season 2 (and the TV movie too, I hope) on Netflix. It's about this 18-year-old girl (George) who's pretty apathetic toward life, and then she dies, leaving behind her 11-year-old sister (Reggie), her crazy mom (Joy), and her cheating father (Clancy). She becomes a reaper, removing the souls of people right before they die. She's technically undead, still in a body, but with a different name (Millie) and a different face. She can't go back to her family, because aside from not understanding and it possibly causing chaos and panic, she would start to lose her memories of them. She has to keep reaping until the day she hits her unspecified quota, and then she moves on and someone new takes her place.The similarities between George and Reggie and Michelle and myself are so eerie, and some of the episodes struck so close to home, I admit that I cried while watching them. I know it's just a show, and just a story, but it's a nice thought, thinking that maybe my sister's still out there, with some stranger's face, working some awful gig while she reaps souls to get her "quota." Or maybe she's part of someone's better quota and, even if Mom and I are still here, she's in a better place, where she's happy and at peace, with her dad and Grandma Alice and Grandpa Ed and everyone else.
Her death made me think I was so mature back then, but I didn't know what "maturity" was. I was pretty emo through high school, I know that, and maybe I am still now. Growing isn't something you stop doing at a particular age, and there's no maturity deadline. I guess I just want to make the most of what I have (what she didn't get to have) and keep learning, loving, and living.
