My Sister

My Sister

During the nine months of waiting, my sister Pam passed away suddenly. At the time, I had been rewriting a book where the main character’s sister passes away in a bathtub. I typed in the sentence, which ends in ‘….that fateful phone call from her father to tell her that her sister had passed away in a bathtub.’ As soon as I typed the sentence, the phone rang; and it was my dad telling me that my sister had passed away while in the bathtub.

My world fell apart. My sister was gone. Every success fantasy I played in my head over the years; had her in it. I always imagined sitting on a talk show, talking about the stories and next to me was my husband and my sister. Like my husband, she believed in me from the beginning. She always told me that someday I’d be a famous author. Her belief burned like a flame inside of me. After she died, the flame went out.

The Aftermath

After she died, I couldn’t write. I felt no purpose. I felt no excitement. I sat for hours at a time, staring at the screen and rewriting the same sentence over and over again. The running narrative in my brain was; why bother doing it if she’s not around to see it? The ‘creative block’ went on for four long months. It didn’t help either that the sentence I had been writing actually came true at the exact moment. The irony of that has never gone away. Because of that; I haven’t been able to finish rewriting that book.

The ‘Unwritten’ Help

Each day without writing for me was horrendous. Since writing was my release, having writers block was painful. It’s like a big bolder blocking my escape. I couldn’t go around it, and I couldn’t go through it. And this bolder was blocking more than just one creative door. It had turned into a full creative block.

I had no interest in anything that I normally did. Every trick I tried to get me back on track; failed. Even listening to music was painful. For months, I didn’t listen to music, not even in the car. I just listened to my thoughts that bounced around and made no sense. Why would God take her from her family and all the people that love her? How could I do this without her? Was there a point in even trying?

Then, one night on my way home from work, something happened that turned everything around for me. I turned on the radio and I heard a song that I had never heard before; Natasha Bedingfield’s song ‘Unwritten’.

Something about the song grabbed me. The lyrics seemed to fit too perfectly. ‘Staring at the blank page before you, open up the dirty window and feel the sun on your face….” ‘The best is still unwritten…’

Suddenly, I felt a tingly warm sensation move over me like a cozy hug. I could feel her. And for the first time in four months; I could visualize my success again. I felt it was her telling me to keep going.

I turned up the music and listened to it until the end, and then I flipped it to the next channel and it was playing….and then when it was finished, I’d arrow through static to the next channel, and it too was playing the song! I had tears streaming down my face as a sense of happiness came over me. She was there with me, I knew she was. She was saying ‘The best is still unwritten’… In other words; keep going!

The reason for the picture of the heart in the sand

Last year at this time of year on my sister's birthday, I sat on our back porch and cried. I was on the phone with my daughter and I told her how much I missed my sister. It was dark outside. The next morning, in the sand outside the screen from where I had been sitting on the phone was a natural depressed heart, perfectly shaped. If you zoom in on the picture, you can see that the sides have just fallen away from the earth. It wasn't chiselled & there are no foot prints around it. In my heart, I believe it was left there by my sister, who wanted me to know that's she still around. So now, if there's one picture that represents my sister and the bond that we had; it's this one.