I have two younger sisters and I am the oldest of the three of us. This is usually what I tell people when I first meet them, depending on how much I think the person will actually turn out to be involved in my life. The truth is, I have but never knew, another older sister. She died of leukemia about two years before I was born.

Looking back now and becoming a mother myself, I now understand and see things as they are and not through my childhood lens. What happened to my parents was awful, devastating and broke them in many ways. This was their first daughter and they literally watched her die, day by day. She would be almost 36 today and back then, cancer treatment for her was experimental and many things were unknown. There wasn’t much they could do for my sister when they found out. At the time she was just under two and she lived about six months longer.

My parents told my sisters and I bits and pieces growing up. They told us her name, they had pictures of her in the house, and a few special items from her very short life — her teddy bear, t-shirts from fundraisers, a giant mickey mouse. I could sense the pain in my mother all my life; she’s guarded, strong, quiet, tough. People don’t exactly understand her because I think she lives a bit in both worlds. One part with her daughters here, and one part with her daughter who isn’t here.

It was just recently that I realized I was a bit different too. I realized that the fact that I would study her pictures and read her obituary when no one knew was surely not a “regular” childhood activity. I didn’t really know that my friends had not been exposed to death the way I had as a child; it was just there, she was a part of me and so was her death. I remember sneaking into my parents’ room and looking through their picture albums of my sister as a young child. Did she look like me? What was she thinking? Can she see me? I thought of her as a guardian angel. I just didn’t realize that many people didn’t understand or know what to say when I would bring her up except, “I’m sorry.”

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I’ve always felt those apologies were not mine to take though; they were for my parents. They are the ones who suffered; I after all, wasn’t even born. I still can’t deny that she’s an explicit part of who I am. She defines my faith, and she is the beautiful hope that I have for restoration of my parents.

When I gave birth for the first time, I was in awe of the closeness to life that I was an essential part of in those first moments. I remember actually seeing the world in a completely different way when we were discharged from the hospital. It was as if I could finally understand my parents, understand the gravity and the weight of their loss. My parents stressed always being on good terms with one another and always saying “I love you” because they knew that each day is not a guarantee. One of my father’s greatest sayings is “nothing is guaranteed,” basically reminding me that any direction can lead to a different result regardless of what we think will happen.

My parents have an eternal perspective on life which has profoundly influenced my own life perspective. Having survived one of the worst things I can imagine has allowed them to give as much as they can to all sorts of people they meet. They wake up everyday, give their all to that day and that’s it. Day by day. They are my strength as a mother, and why I need to persevere even though life isn’t always sweet everyday, why I need to give everything I have to my children.