as long as we remember

We have one photograph of all five of us, a selfie taken on the living room rug.  It's printed in black and white and framed in Tolliver's bedroom.  Recently he moved the image from across the room to the table right beside his bed.

Last week, when Tucker brought up her name, Andy asked what he remembered most about her.  Tuck said that she liked applesauce with cinnamon, and that she kept her eyes closed a lot and was usually napping.  

That’s the part that bothers me, that the memory of a sister’s short life wound up colored by the dysfunction of disease.

Sometimes I write down memories for the benefit of my boys, her brothers.  Other times we talk about her together.  Andy reminded Tucker that he used to put the back of his head against hers and press their hair together, how the silent way they spoke taught us to really hear.

When the boys ask questions, we follow each random trail to the fullest conclusion we can.  We try to tell them things they don’t remember or never fully knew, to put words and images to the blurriness of their recollections.  They are fascinated by the idea that she walked around this house, that she talked about shoes and dogs and cheese, that she was alive.

She is more than a sad little ghost caught in a single picture frame.  She is more than a historical event.  She is more than hazy, half-glimpsed visions of red curls and pill bottles, ivory skin and wasted youth.

None of us had the privilege of really knowing her as she grew, but we tell them what we can.  Who knows what might sift through and lodge in the scaffolding of their brains, but they are not too young to understand the currency of memories, how they keep you company.  They learned early on about the clenching muscle of the heart, the way it wants to grasp the ungraspable, preserve the ephemeral.

Of course she is still your sister, we say.  People die, but our relationship with them does not.
She did like cherry yogurt just like you!  Yes, and donuts and pizza too.
That's right, her feet were pointed like a ballerina, we agree, saving symptoms of immobility for another time.
But there was no medicine, we have to remind to Tollie. 

Her story is so filled with horror I wish it were not ours to tell.  It is also a story of adventure, of danger and survival, of grief and loss, of starting fresh, of creating, losing, rebuilding a sense of home, of family, of old friends lost and new friends made, of sibling bonds.  Telling them things they don't remember but which belong to them is like cracking open a space in their self-identity and pouring in the backstory. 
This is where you came from.  This is what we once feared and grieved and how we moved forward.  Her story is your story too, this is who we are.