I just got some news and am still shaking
My sister died today. I hardly knew her . I was 11 years old when I first found out I even had a sister. She was already 1 1/2 years old. I missed her baby years. I missed out on expecting a new member of the family. I missed out on her first steps and giving her a bottle. I missed out on snuggling a newborn and all those wonderful baby smells. I missed dressing her up and caring for her. And ooohhhhh I wanted a sister so badly. But had three brothers before my parents separated.
I had one year when I was twelve to dress and play and take care of her and then I was gone again. During that year I became her mommy. I got her up and fed her and changed her and took her to the babysitters before I went to school. After school I picked her up and took her home. I was the one who fed her and played with her and then put her to bed. I was the one who loved her. Then I was sent to foster care.
By the time I went back to my mother Robin was a little girl just starting kindergarten. I quit school to take care of her. I walked her to school and brought her back. I was the one to feed her and start supper.
I had two years of caring for her before I married. In her whole life we only lived in the same house for 3 years. I have a picture of her playing with my baby. Robin is sitting on the floor rocking the baby seat.... so proud to be an auntie.
It wasn't long before my mother put Robin in a group home. By the age of 14 Robin was a troubled young girl. Far more troubled than I knew. I don't think she ever went to live back home again. She tried but my mother always refused to let her come home.
Robin told me that she had been sexually abused as a child. I knew about the beatings. I knew she often went to school with bruises and whelts on her legs. I knew she was a hurting kid but there was nothing I could do.
She disappeared from the family as all of my mother's children have done. I didn't hear from her for years. When she did finally contact me she was heavy into drugs to numb the pain inside her. She didn't remember those beatings. She once told me that she still believed the JWs had the truth. She said she decided early on that she knew she could never be a perfectly good (like any JW) so she decided to be perfectly bad. She spent the rest of her years being perfectly bad.
A few years ago I tried to get her into a drug rehab program. Everything was set. All she had to do was show up. She didn't. She didn't want to deal with the demons of the past - a past filled with condemning Jehovah's Witnessess. A past filled with a mother's hatred and a father's desertion. She swore she would never bring a child into this world. It was just too painful a place to be.
Yesterday I hung a picture on my wall. It is the only picture of all 5 of us together. That was 35 years ago. She looks like an innocent child dressed in her white dress and her hair in braids. We were in Toronto for a convention and my father brought my oldest brother to visit with us. One picture of a family of children torn apart but for one moment captured in a frame.
My only thought now is that she is free of the past and the hurts and pains of a life she could never heal from.
Robin: May you finally rest in peace.
