The Phone Call I Expected… and Still Wasn’t Ready For
I tend to write when my emotions turn complicated, and today is one of those days. It’s been five years since my oldest sister passed away. I was at work when my husband called. I stepped into the back room, away from the sales floor, and answered. He told me they had found her in the bathtub. She had drowned. I sat down on a wooden stool, taking slow, steady breaths as the weight of his words sank into me. The magnitude of it felt like standing on the edge of a cliff, the ocean far below—one of those moments when life reminds you just how small you are and how quickly everything can change. “Okay,” I think that was my response. I didn’t cry. What I felt first was relief. Then sadness, and a deep ache of empathy for my parents. That concern wrapped around my own complicated feelings like a cloak. Her death was a shock, and yet it was also the call we had quietly expected for years. In the world of grief work—something I’ve devoted myself to since losing my son—there’s a term called “co...
