My Chum

My sister kept a blog for years. I don't remember if she started one because I did, or if I was the little sister copy-cat. It was most likely the latter; everything Odessa did was marvelous in my eyes, and worth imitating. We would regularly read each others entries, and leave comments that only we could appreciate or make sense of. The magic of sisterhood is that you have your own secret language - even if you're using English words the meanings are entirely different in the context of a sisterly conversation.
Her postings became sporadic throughout college, mine as my life settled into uninteresting routines without her. She was the source of my inspiration; the other half of my brain; an eerily similar yet slightly more mature perspective thru every event in our lives.

I haven't had the courage to read her blog since her death nearly 4 years ago. It's funny how even tho you miss someone with every atom of your being and the pain of their absence is so brutally persistent that you would give anything to have them with you, you still avoid anything that brings you too close to them. Somehow the pain of remembering is even harsher than the pain of losing. Just the thought of hearing her voice in her posts makes me literally shake. All of my creativity - music, theatre, and writing - died with her. This blog was rather a surprise to me; little parts of me were waking up after four long years. Like muscles that have been paralyzed and unused, my inspiration was weak and malnourished, but with time and use it would grow strong again. I thought that I had healed at last.

But healing from an amputation doesn't mean that your limb grows back. And even tho I can read music again, and I wear her jackets, and I don't scream into a pillow every horrific, sleepless night, the gaping void she used to fill in my life still exists.
I didn't realize tho, how much of herself she left for me. So many of her thoughts, musings, and personal stories in writing, so I wouldn't forget who she was and how well I knew her. I'm working up the courage to read her postings; to open the land of memories for exploration again. I started by reading over my own old blog and finding her in blurbs about our concerts, photo-shoots and jobs together, and in the comments she left. I wrote briefly about the term 'chum' and what a comfy, intimate, life-long friendship sort of feeling it invokes. My darling sister responded:

"I completely agree. Shall we be chums? Forever and ever? Please do say yes. :)"

(Her blog is called Andante. You can find it on my Site Seeing links.)