From Our Growing TSP Family: The Story of a Lost Sister

A sister-friend from our extended network, baker and blogger Marilyn Pollack Naron, sent us the following piece about losing her sister to cancer when Marilyn was 30 and Iris was 26.

By Marilyn Pollack Naron
I HADN’T PLANNED to bring Josie to the hospice that morning, as I did every morning, but right before I dropped her with friends, Iris called from her bedside phone.  My sister sounded impatient, herself. “You’re bringing Josie, right?”

“Well, no. She was going to Barbara’s this morning.”

“Well, no. I want you to bring her.”

“But. Well…”

“What? Just do it.”

Morphine, I think.  Humor her.  “Fine.”

“Okay. Bye.”

She would then call our father at his office, and wait for his secretary to put her through. She told him she loved him, just because, then hung up, leafed a few catalogs, watched some TV, possibly thought about cancer, and waited for us to show up.

An hour later we we sat on her hospital bed, making paper chains and watching The View. Eighteen months old, Josie sat on the floor waving red construction paper, giggling. Iris and I were chatting, silly nothings, and just as we began to mock the show she caught her breath, fish-gasping, her eyes double-wide. Liquid panic. What. Today? I jumped off the bed.

“Should I get the nurse?” She looked at me, no. Back on the mattress, my knees in her side, I grabbed her left hand in my two hands, and in less than a minute she was gone. I crouched over her on the pillow, stroking her knuckles, 26-year-old skin, still smooth. We’d always feared Grandma’s paper skin and ropey lines, gawked in her cabinets at mysterious jars and creams. I stroked her hand, stared at her eyes, looking up, down, talking. Now you will never have Porcelana in the bathroom. You will never have Grandma’s hands.

I meant to run down the hall for our mother, sitting in the lounge, out for just a few minutes. But I kept stroking her hand, breathing after she’d stopped, reminding her that it was okay, it was okay, I think it’s okay. Josie ran around the bed laughing, tearing paper, looping chains round my leg. I should have gone for my mother, my sister’s mother, but I kept those seconds, and took a few more. Daughter at my ankle, I pressed my nose to my sister’s wrist, rubbed my forehead up her arm. That arm had sampled a thousand perfumes, been kissed by our dogs, had itched in my sweaters. I took another breath, and hit the call button.

A moment later the first hospice nurse stepped in, the pretty one; we’d envied her highlights, her nails. She moved calmly, took Iris’s pulse, noted the clock. A second nurse came in, ample and brown-eyed, the one I saw on the floor desk every day at 9. Smoothing Iris’s wavy hair, still warm, she turned and burst out in tears, arms open.

“Oh honey,” she grabbed me. “Oh, honey,” crushing, and I closed my eyes. “I will be your sister now.”

__________

We are honored that Marilyn Pollack Naron shared her story with The Sister Project, as other sisters and sister friends have begun to do as our online family here grows.

We’ve long been fans of Marilyn’s  food blog, Simmer Till Done, where Marilyn describes herself as, “a pastry chef–but I don’t work in restaurants anymore, so you can just call me giver of dessert happiness.” She lives in Lawrence, Kansas, “the coolest college town in America,” she says, where she also admits to Ebay binges, snacking on butter, kissing her dog and making true deep-dish pizza. Thanks to you, Marilyn, for your generosity.

If you have a story you’d like to share on any aspect of sisterhood, send it to thesisterproject [at] gmail [dot] com.

No related posts.

Enjoy this post? Don't miss anything on The Sister Project network. Sign up for our new email newsletter, and subscribe to our RSS feed