I haven’t had a lot of time to really process all the losses in my life. Between losing my mom, moving my dad, losing my sister—a pandemic—then losing my dad, only to find out about Annie’s cancer diagnosis a few months later—well—it’s been a lot. One of the things I’ve noticed coming up for me is little pockets of grief that I somehow never processed but find their way into my day and take me by surprise. It’s not a shock…I had little time to go from one loss to the next and be able to do anything about the way I was feeling about it. Who could process?
One of my great regrets, though, is how my sister Susie and I spent her last years together. It comes up for me now, I think, because of the confluence of anniversaries and events that occur in April. Eight years ago, my first book was published and we held the launch on April 6th which Susie attended—of course. What makes her attendance memorable was that it was held mere weeks after the eight-hour emergency abdominal surgery she underwent since the IBS she had been diagnosed with and walked around suffering from for almost a year was in fact ovarian cancer. I came across this piece of writing a few days ago and the fear, anger and love showed right up again—as if it had been last week.
The morning of Susie’s surgery.
March 20, 2014
An email came in about 8am from a colleague with whom I don’t typically correspond on a regular basis. The subject was “Sisters” and it was one of those forwards that makes you smile and you think about a few people you would send it to, but then you forget about it and you don’t lose any sleep over it if you don’t send it along.
This morning it meant something. It was an omen, a charm. I printed it out and folded it up tiny and added it to my magic bag of other charms to protect Susie and keep me calm.
I am accepting the universe’s messages to me today to remember to keep my heart open and will my love and energy to Susie right now. There is so much I don’t understand about why she has to go through this. How did so many doctors miss this. How do you miss cancer? How do large organs get removed from one’s body without creating a literal and figurative hole in that body? How do I support her? Her family?
After the surgery.
When she was finally awake, I went over to the hospital to spend some time with her. One of the doctors who had assisted with the surgery came in. She was very businesslike and pleasant, in a no-nonsense kind of way. You could tell she had many important things to get to and this stop was just one on her list.
She told Susie: “It was a very long surgery. The doctor got most of the cancer out.” Susie asked about her diverticulitis - which it clearly wasn’t anymore, but she had just come out of 3 days of unconsciousness, so she can be forgiven. The doctor told her, “It wasn’t that. The cancer spread into your abdomen and the doctor took out sections of your bowel. That’s why you have that tube.”
The young woman walked around to the feeding tube side of Susie’s bed. She began asking her about her breast cancer and then she asked who I was.
“I am her sister, her older sister.”
“You should get tested,” she said it like she had already prescribed it for me and I was dilly-dallying about it.
“I am currently waiting the results of my BRCA test,” I replied. Politely, because we are nothing if not polite, even in our fear.
“Your brother should get tested too.” Again with the impatience.
“I’ll let him know,” I answered.
And I didn’t say out loud, what was shouting in my head, “Really? Task me with tests and counseling? How about save some of your lecturing for the doctors. Maybe some doctors need some testing and counseling or how else could my sister walk around for 8 fucking months with ovarian cancer and a tumor eating up her belly without one of them noticing?”
That’s what I would have liked to have said. But as I mentioned, we are polite to a fault.
It is also National Poetry Month—her month. She loved spring and summer. She was a nature lover, a tree hugger. She was a Master gardener, a summoner of seeds and birds and song and beauty. Susie was named Middletown, Conn.’s first Poet Laureate and in her last book of poetry, published after her death, she wrote a little about herself.
A Deranged Poetess
The timing the ripeness
the stroke of light--
A poet is a poet is a poetess
the poet supposes the poet
eats roses, the poet composes.
a poet is a poet as a poet I suppose
its unnerving
not everyone loves a word
the way a poet loves a word.
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During the years after her surgery, she rallied and faltered, took on the world, then shunned it again. She had just gotten word from her doctors that her cancer had returned when she was in Florida when my mom died. Her condition was one of the reasons we moved my dad here…so they could spend some time together, not really knowing who had more of it, her or him.
Our own last year together was pierced by petty complaints and indictments of my failure as a sister. At first I was angry and upset by her behavior—why would she treat me this way? Why was she preventing us from the closeness we had always shared? I now believe she was saying good-bye and neither of us wanted to hear it. When she would come over to “help” with dad, she mostly slept. When she was awake, she worked on her poetry relentlessly, preparing the manuscript for a book she would never see published.
She died a year after dad moved to Connecticut. I wrote about the night she died: That night, her husband called us just after 8pm, while spring thunderstorms and tornadoes pummeled Connecticut, as if Susie’s departure from our world caused a great rupture and the earth keened at the loss.
Susie’s loss slips over me like a light breeze or a sudden chill. I feel her in my bones, on my skin; I hear her in my voice, see her through my eyes and find her in my words. She is in her son. She is as present as she is gone; as much with me as without me. The grief that is now a part of me—what was once my sister’s life—has a depth I don’t even know yet. And there is also a part of me that knows that the love we shared remains…because we held it for each other.
From Be Full Susan Allison 2018
You are so blessed with talent to write such a amazing piece. You are a wonderful sister.
Beautiful…like Susie, like you 💜