When the circle is broken

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/11/2023 (702 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two weeks ago, we made the 640-kilometre trek west across the island of Newfoundland, from St. John’s to Deer Lake.

My oldest sister, my husband and I made the white-knuckle drive through torrential rains, thick fog and gale-force winds that buffeted the car, nearly pushing us sideways off the Trans-Canada Highway.

Our cargo included 200 live crickets inside a five-gallon ice cream container with air holes punched in the top, complete with egg-carton habitat and an apple to sustain them.

The unwary crickets were food themselves, intended for some of the creatures at the Newfoundland Insectarium — owned by our middle sister and her husband — whose 25^th year in business we were gathering to celebrate.

My brother’s moose-hunting trip to Newfoundland coincided with our visit, meaning us four siblings were together for the first time in ages.

We reunited surrounded by food and laughter, and we learned about Atlas moths — whose cleverly camouflaged cocoons hang like dead leaves from tree branches — and axolotls, the elusive smiling salamanders from Mexico.

At the anniversary party, when we took to the floor for Elvis’s Blue Suede Shoes, I couldn’t remember when we’d all danced together before.

But we weren’t really all together.

We were acutely aware of who was not there; a bittersweet moment tinged with grief.

Our sister Barbie died three years ago. She would have been 68 this month.

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No one tells you what the loss of a sibling will feel like.

Or maybe they do and you don’t really listen because the thought of it is unfathomable. Until it isn’t.

And then you feel the wrenching tear in your heart like a tree being ripped up by its roots.

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Barbie was baptized Barbara Ann in an era when there were little Barbara Anns in towns all across Canada, named for figure skater Barbara Ann Scott.

Ours was born at a time of immense family sorrow, the same month our grandfather was lost at sea and our broken-hearted grandmother was dying.

Hers was a breech birth. Mom used to recall that one of Barbie’s arms had to be broken to bring her into the world. She went home wearing a tiny cast.

I always thought she got a rough deal, having to start out life hurt from the get-go.

She was quiet and shy, the second child of five.

Barbie lived simply and fully with her husband in a small outport town where she was everyone’s friend, raising their sons and giving back to her community and her church.

When I was a child, she was my protector, often volunteering to look after me when my mother was busy or depressed.

At the age of five — when she was 15 — I was hit by a car as I left her side to run across the road to join some other kids. I was shaken but not badly hurt. When she carried me home, her orange Joe Cool sweatshirt stained by my bleeding nose and lip, my mother chastised her for being irresponsible.

Shocked by the injustice, I tried to explain it was my fault, but Barbie just stood there quietly and took the blame.

In recent years, when cancer came for her a second time, we would not allow ourselves to believe it would take her. We shared her hope to the end.

And in her final days, I naively thought we’d have one of those scripted moments when you tell each other with perfect eloquence how much you loved each other; how much her sisterhood meant; all those family memories — the Christmases, the Halloweens, the birthdays — unfurling in front of our eyes like a movie reel.

But it wasn’t like that.

She suffered. She asked someone to get her purse. We told her we loved her. And then she was gone.

Gone.

And then your stuttering brain becomes like a tongue compulsively searching out the jagged edge of a broken tooth, returning to the same place again and again and again, hoping to find something different.

Grappling with the enormity of it. The permanence.

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On Oct. 19, we drove back home from the west coast on a brilliant sunny day. Whirling leaves from the autumn trees danced on the pavement in front of us, the yellow leaves of the birches stippled against the blue sky like a pointillist masterpiece.

I contemplated then that life is reset when you lose people you love. Someone is always going to be missing, their absence like emotional scar tissue — a slow, dull ache.

I realized that you’ll still feel joy and love, but it will be tempered by the knowledge that they aren’t here to share it.

And life will never be the same.

Pam Frampton is a freelance writer and editor who lives in St. John’s.

pamelajframpton@gmail.com