Delicate Life

Forget all about all those things I said I would be posting about (even though I never explained what they were) because I need to write a little bit about my sister.

In mid June of 1987, my dad and his wife (not my mom) rushed to the hospital. His wife was having complications with her pregnancy. I, the oldest of us all at the young age of 11, was left to watch my younger brother and my two younger step-sisters. We were scared because we knew that if the baby came on that night, she would be almost two months early.

Step-mom was real sick and they decided to keep her in the hospital. Finally, at the end of June, our sister was born. She was small but the doctors said she was a fighter...if they only knew how true their words were. We got to see pictures because the doctors had to keep her for a while. Dad said that because we were her sisters and brother, that we would get to name the newest member of our family.

We all wrote down a series of names...one favorite was Shit Head (dad's contribution)...and gave the list to Dad. He took it to the hospital and step-mom read over the list. She picked one and Dad agreed. They called us up to tell us the news. I was more than shocked to find out that they picked the name I had wrote. More than that, I was kind of honored.

So Lisa got to come home about a month later. She was strong and beautiful and Dad said she looked just like me. She was the coolest thing to all of us kids. We spent the entire rest of the summer in the house watching her constantly. We were afraid that if we left her side, we would miss a cool new sound or facial expression she would make.

But then, summer ended and me and bro had to go back home to Mom's and go back to school. We rarely got to see her after that. Christmas and a few weekends here and there. And every time we did see her, it seemed that she had grown so much more than the time we saw her last.

Newborn was suddenly 4. I was tangled in my out of control life and my brother was entering the gang scene. Lisa would call our house and if we weren't there, she would talk to our mom. Whether it was us or Mom, the conversation was always the same. Lisa would tell us how she always had a stomach ache, how she would get sick, and how she would fall down a lot.

We had known that Dad had been taking her to the doctor for these problems but the doctors were stumped. Six months and countless "lets try this" remedies and she was still sick and seemed to be getting worse. Finally, one doctor got smart and sent her for a brain scan.

Everything went in fast forward from there. She was rushed to the best children's hospital in Florida, Miami Children's Hospital, because she was in need of emergency surgery to remove a tumor in her four year old little head that was the size of a grapefruit. Yes...that big.

Mom drove Bro and I down there because we had to give blood in case...just in case they needed it.
The surgery took hours but it seemed like days but sometime in the middle of the night, the doctors walked in to the waiting room where our entire family...I mean everyone...waited on the edge of our seats.

The surgery was a success, he said, and they got the entire tumor removed. We had to wait for the tests to find out if it was cancer. But then he said something that I don't think any of us believed. "She might not know who you are when you see her. She will have to learn to talk and walk again and there is a possibility that she might never do either ever again. She's not going to be the same."

Bullshit, I thought. Not my little sister. She's a fighter and she's strong. You'll see, I told the doctor. I think he brushed me off thinking I was just some crazy teenager with a bad attitude and a loud mouth. But I knew my sister...he had no idea.

Bro and I and many of our family members spent three weeks in that waiting room. We slept there, ate there, and took drive-by-trucker baths in the sinks. The outcome was that there was no cancer, and we were relieved, but she still wasn't awake long enough to see what the effects of the surgery were.

Lisa loved to hear me sing. Her favorite song for me to sing was "Sweet Child of Mine," by Guns and Roses. So when it was my turn to sit with her during the day, I would sit there holding her little hand and sing it to her until I couldn't sing anymore.

I had just finished the song for the fourth time and was taking a break because my throat was sore. I started to get up and let go of her hand but she gripped my fingers so hard it almost brought me to my knees. "Again," she demanded. "Again."

Its hard to sing when you are crying but I pulled it off and when I finished she sat up in her bed and said, "I want a Big Mac."
She had the entire room laughing through their tears as she demanded all these silly things from all of us. She was a little mean but cute as hell. And I turned around and smiled at that doctor. "I told you."

Except for the shaved head and the new strength (from steroids they had to give her for the swelling), you would have never known there was ever anything wrong with her. When they finally let her go home, she would call me from time to time and make me sing so she could fall asleep. Her hair grew back and it covered the scars. She was back to her normal self in the blink of an eye.

Lisa just turned 22. She's married and has a beautiful daughter who turned one this year. Dad says she is just like me in so many ways that we should have been twins. Yeah, I'm proud of that. She calls me every chance she gets and we have our song that thankfully she no longer makes me sing (at least not every time we talk) but we do laugh about it. I'm proud of her and everything she has accomplished her life so far. Most of all, I'm proud to say she's my sister.

And when she calls me and says, "I'm so sorry to call you up and just vent." I tell her, "Don't worry about it. That's what sisters are for." I'll laugh and then she'll tell me, "You are the only one who can make me feel better, the only one I can talk to about this world of complications that I call life."

And I tell her, "I will always be here for you, no matter what. Even if its just to sing you that damn song."
She'll say, "See, I feel better already."

This is the message she sent me on facebook after I had missed her call and wrote to her giving her my new cell number: "Love you and miss you too...I hope all is well. I hope to talk to you soon...I really need my sister to talk to right now. TTYL"

And after we talked she sent this: "Thanks...I am glad that I got to hear you. It has been so long since I spoke to you. I just felt better being able to talk to you. Thanks again....Love you."

I thank God everyday that my little sister, the one I almost lost at the young age of four, is able to call me up and unload her problems whenever she needs to...even if I have to sing that damn song.

Life is too short...Live it, dream it, BE IT!