Lisa Learns Aloud

First, this is not a sad story. If you’re crying at the end, I haven’t told this story as I intended.

It’s my sister Kris’s 59th birthday. The 24th birthday in heaven. For me, losing Kris was like losing a third arm I never knew I had. I still have two, like everyone else, I am functional. I live my life like everyone else, with the myriad of emotions, good and bad. It’s natural to lose your parents first. It’s expected and normal. From the time we understand death, we understand that. Kris was my only sibling, 18 months younger than me. We don’t expect to lose a sibling until we’re old. What I lost with Kris was a shared history. Only the two of us knew what it was like to grow up with the same parents, same family, same dynamics, same houses, schools and the same friends. I’m unable to reminisce with Kris. All the moments, funny, shocking, loving, happy and sad. I told you that you shouldn’t cry. That’s because I’m going to share those moments with you.

I couldn’t tell you the very first thing I remember of Kris. I only remember she was always there. In the summer, we played hide and seek in the backyard in among the sheets hanging on the line, and picked strawberries from ‘Grandpa’ Stephenson’s. garden next door. There were boat rides and camping trips. We sang the song ‘Brand New Key’ a thousand times in a row. We jumped off the picnic table as the bionic woman, chanting ‘nu-nu-nu-nu-nu-nu-nu’. We watched and walked in parades, learned to swim, and spent entire days on our bikes riding further than mom probably knew. As teenagers, we spent time in Maine with friends, water-skiing, canoeing, laying out on the dock. We drank Wicked Goodies and went school shopping at the outlet mall in Bangor.

In the fall we raked leaves into house floor plans, carved pumpkins, and walked to school. We Trick-or-Treated in the suffocating masks of the 70s, with costumes straining over our snowsuits. We once toilet papered and waxed the windows of our home on Devil’s night because we were afraid to get into trouble doing it to someone else. Dad was aghast at the logic behind that move. For several years, we watched the Donald Sutherland version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers Thanksgiving night. (Why was that always on at Thanksgiving?)

For the holidays we drove down state to see family, made Christmas cookies, ornaments, Chex mix, and gingerbread houses. We went sledding, and skiing. Sometimes we raced down the hill as fast as possible, poles tucked under our arms, the wind burning our cheeks. Other times we meandered back and forth slowly, turning side to side, swinging our skis around to go down backward, stopping short to give each other snow baths.

In the spring we made leaf and twig boats, watching them float and jump along the rapid water in the ditch, under the culvert, waiting to see them come out the other side. We searched for well hidden Easter baskets, went to Disney World, and Communion classes. We spent time in the youth group at church, and traveled in ‘Big Blue’ on choir trips. We graduated, went to college and grew up.

Had we spent the day together today, we would have reminisced about my hamster escaping and Kris calling ‘here earring, here earring’ as we lied to mom that we lost an earring rather than a rodent. How we got locked out of the house resulting in me hanging onto the sill of my bedroom window while Kris laughed too hard to put the ladder right. How Kris spent an entire afternoon perfecting a one-handed cartwheel, holding on to a glass of water without spilling a drop. Sticking 50 sparklers in the ground and lighting them all at once, burning a perfect circle in the grass. We moved the picnic table over the evidence, which did not fool our dad.

Kris and her friends torturing me by singing Su-Su-Sudio when I was, as the first one with a license, tasked with carting them around town. There was the photo she took of me as I rounded the basement stairs, my face frozen in shock and horror. I was graciously allowed to burn both the picture and the negative. I am forever grateful social media wasn’t a thing in the 80s.

I got better grades than Kris, but in no way was I smarter than her. She was clever and funny. Her deadpan deliveries cracked everyone up. I still think the mediocre grades were a ploy to get our parents to pay her for good grades. It worked.

I moved to Ohio, and we saw each other less often, but Kris would call me every day and give me the ‘Little House on the Prairie’ update. She would visit Ohio with our parents, her boyfriend, and our Grandma. She once advised her boyfriend on the way to the mall to, “keep your mouth shut and your wallet open, and you’ll get through this just fine’. She laughed at me as I yanked on the door of the closed bookstore, accusing me of being desperate for mental stimulation after spending all weekend with them.

We would have eaten cake today and laughed until we cried. She took a lot when she left us, but she left a lot too. Her friends are my friends, and we get together occasionally to talk about Kris and her antics. People remember her to me and it makes me smile.

So Happy Heavenly Birthday, Kris, until I join you, and God says, ‘Uh oh, these two will be trouble’. And we will, but it’ll be good trouble.