Facebook Yesterday

Every year since 2005, I have acknowledged my sister's birthday on Facebook. Yesterday I did not. It is not because I forgot. 

Although I did spend some portion of the day wondering if her friends and my family would think that I forgot. I did not forget. 

But yesterday, I did not want to deal with anybody else. I did not want to hear their memories of my sister or hear their empathies or sympathies. Yesterday I was dark. And when I post things on Facebook, I prefer not to be dark. When I post about my sister, Tracey's, birthday on Facebook, I try to have it be a celebration of the 39 years she lived as opposed to the morning of the 18 years I’ve had without her. 

I always give myself a pass on March 12. I usually don’t know how I’m going to feel that day. Sometimes I celebrate life in a big way – go out to dinner, buy something special for the kids, call old friends. Some days I feel very dark. My sisters birthday is a harder day for me than the day she died. I don’t know why but it is. Perhaps it’s because on the day she died I think about her release from this life and her joy in heaven with her husband and the animals she loved so much. I think of the beautiful spot where her ashes were laid to rest and I think of her being at peace and out of pain.

On her birthday however, I think about her life. I think about what is unfinished what was left unfinished and the many, many, many years of my life that have been without her.

Yesterday I thought about posting something on Facebook. But I’m really tired of the same pictures of me and her. Every picture ending with me at age 18.

Not only that, but we took very very very few pictures together. She and I were alive together in the days before cell phone cameras and we never spent time taking pictures together. I did not want a reminder of that on Facebook today. There are almost no pictures of just my sister and me together -- just the same dozen or so of us in a group. And they will never be any additional pictures. And I didn’t need that reminder on Facebook today.

My senior year of high school was the first year we started to share secrets. It was the first time I felt like she and I might be on the same page. It was also the last nine months before she died. I had a lot going on that year. I had a boyfriend, I applied to colleges, I had Senior harp recitals, standardized testing, extracurricular activities, friends, everything a senior year should be for an all American girl. I didn’t have a lot of time to spend with her but the time I did spend with her was good that year. 

I have brief snapshots of memories of her coming to my tennis matches, of her bringing me workout pants at school when I forgot them, of our having a movie night up at her house, of my spending the night at her house for a sleepover. A memory when I’m sitting next to her in church on Christmas Eve and I’m come back to sit next to her after I played the harp. Listening to her voice sing the Christmas carols.

I do think we would have grown closer. Because of the hope we had during my senior year. And all those are not things I want to put on Facebook. I didn’t want to deal with anybody else yesterday.

 

I can remember my sister and her birthday without telling Facebook about it.