A Memory

My oldest  sister would have been 53 on Tuesday. I've tried several times since her death in December to eulogize her in some, but I've not really been able to. Our relationship was a strained; we'd go many months without talking or seeing each other, despite living only a mile or two apart. Then she would call or message me, asking if I was mad at her and why hadn't I called or anything. I'd remind her that the last time we talked she told me she didn't want to have anything to do with me, and that when I (or anyone else) did try to call she wouldn't answer her phone or return messages. I once told her she was more like L than she'd ever know, and she didn't talk to me for another three or four months.

So it's hard to write about someone like that, especially once they're gone. I could talk about all the bad times, and how I suspect she was bi-polar, and she certainly suffered from depression. But though those aspects came to dominate her personality in the later years, that's not the full story. Yes, she had her dark times; and let me tell you, her dark times made my dark times look like a festival of lights! But there were times when she would work her way up from the depths, and she could be a wonderful person.

When she left her first husband, she came to stay with us for several months. She'd left her husband for another guy, of course, but she couldn't be with him at first, and though the wife and I were concerned about how it would go with her staying with us, we welcomed her. And you know, she was mostly fun to be around! She and I would laugh our asses off together about silly things while the wife just shook her head. She had her moments when she was staying with us where things just overwhelmed her, and she'd be upset about things, but she stayed in good spirits for the most part and was never bitchy with us.

I could write volume after boring volume about her, and how she'd be nice and sweet one moment and be psycho-bitch from hell the next seven months... actually, I can't. I've been trying for the past four months and keep deleting everything because it just gets too jumbled up. I loved my sister, but she was hard to like sometimes, and that's really all that you have to know. But I do want to share one story about her, and it's the one I remember most when I think of her.

Back in the mid 90s, I'd quit my cable installation job (the first one I took after getting out of the Army) and tried my hand at sales. As it happens, I'm terrible at sales, but it took almost a year of trying various jobs before I threw in the towel and decided to get back into the real working world. (No offense to any sales people who are reading.)

It was almost two months before I even got a call for an interview, and I was starting to get desperate. I couldn't even get unemployment, because my sales jobs had been "contractor" based and I'd voluntarily left my last job. When I finally did get an interview, the first person I told was my sister. (The wife was at work so I couldn't tell her until later.)

She asked what I was going to wear, and I told her my only suit still fit (I was much thinner then, my last sales job having involved lots of walking every day) and had been cleaned since the last time I'd worn it. She said good, and was I going to get a haircut, because she'd seen me the previous weekend and it was getting pretty shabby. I told her it wasn't that bad, and I didn't have the extra money for it at the moment. Without any hesitation, she said "Get over here right now; I'm going to give you $20 and you're going to get your hair cut!"

It might not sound like much, but it meant the world to me. She and her then husband didn't have much either, but she gave me what she had to help me out. I wound up not getting the job; the guy actually told me he felt like the job required someone with an edge to them, and I looked too clean cut and acted too normal. It turned out that it would have been another type of sales job, so I was just as well off. A week later I started a temporary assignment that became a full-time position, and was a much better fit than the other job would have been.