The Familiar Stranger in my Photo Album

I don’t talk about it a lot because I’m never sure what to say. All I do know is it’s a total buzzkill. There are some questions that on the surface are simple, but are figuratively loaded with landmines.

1.       How many siblings do you have?
2.     12 years between you and your sister, why such a big age gap? Were you an ‘oops baby’?

The answers are simple. I have two siblings. Both older sisters, but one of them died when she was six, and it was before I was born. In fact, there is such an age gap because my parents needed to wrestle with the question of "do we have another baby or not", after she died. I wasn’t an ‘oops’ at all. I was totally planned for, after my sister died.

See – buzzkill!

It’s not difficult for me to talk about. I am pretty removed from the whole thing. It’s not like I knew her, I came on the scene three years after her death.

It’s also not like it was a big family secret. I can’t remember a time not knowing I had two sisters, and one of them died when she was six. I don’t remember what the conversation was like, I just always knew that the other blonde girl in all our family photo albums was my sister Jenny, and she died before I was born. I didn’t consider how to feel about it, it was just a fact, so I never pondered how awkward that conversation was for other people. It never bothered me any. I didn’t realize when some nice old lady at the store asks you how many brothers and sisters you have, launching in to how you have two sisters – but the one died of a brain tumor can be difficult for people to handle. I think it’s a testament to how kids handle news like this when I think back on how un-phased I was by these conversations.

But I get it now, and for the most part, I have a 3 second pause before I answer those questions now to gauge a few things. Like how badly will this bring the mood down? Am I obligated to tell this person? For example, will it be an even more awkward conversation down the line where I have to mention, "oh yeah, I do have another sibling, but I didn’t know you well enough yet to mention it." Will I ever even see you again? Do you really want to know? It’s some quick mental math you need to do, and the equation always has different variables. Needless to say, it’s still not a science yet on how I answer this question.

We had this situation come up just this past weekend. We had a bonfire at our house and the question was asked “Do you have just the one sibling?” I swear I am going deaf, so I missed the question entirely, which left Gabe, who is new to grappling with this question, to reply “I think just the one…” not graceful, but he was also trying to navigate the landmine that this innocent question always crops up, and was left to flounder because of my deafness and zoning out by staring at the fire.

This led to him getting ribbed because "What do you mean you think?"...but he was just trying to avoid the awkward conversation, and leave it up to me if we were going there or not.

Once my attention was regained, and I was re-asked, my mental math told me to reply – “yes, just the one.”  Whenever I opt for this answer, I finish that sentence in my head with the phrase “still living.” As if I am somehow lying by not bringing it up, and this has become sort of my fingers crossed behind my back way of dealing with the question.

I don’t know why I didn’t elaborate this time. The group was small, and made up of family and friends who are like family. I think the variable on this one was bonfires tend to make people thoughtful anyway – and are prone to bouts of long silence. I don’t want that long silence filled with my guests trapped thinking – “shit, what do I say? Her sister is dead!”  That’s something I try to spare people now, because I don’t need comfort – and there is nothing to say really, but still people feel compelled to say something. I guess I’d rather just not deal with it. For the most part she is a stranger to me. She is a familiar stranger, who looks like my sister and I, but is for the most part is unknown to me.

Cut to Sunday and we were driving to the North Shore. Because we had to drop the dog off with my parents we had to take 23 through Milaca to 35. I grew up in Milaca, and my parents moved shortly after I graduated from high school, so it’s not like I ever really get back there. We’ve driven through a couple times. I've showed him our Milaca house, once we drove through Pease to look at the Pease house. We’ve eaten at the Drive-In, and taken a spin around the town. We’ve even hit up Unclaimed Freight! We've basically done all the good stuff, but I still get excited to go "home" and see the old place.

For some reason when we were in Foreston, I had a notion – so I blurted it out, “Do you want to go see my sister’s grave in Milaca?”

I didn’t really even have time to formulate it, it literally was a thought that was not there a moment before it spewed from my mouth. I know it’s a weird question, but Gabe rolled with it and said, “Do you want to?”

“Yeah – I kind of do.”

I’m not sure why I wanted to stop – we’ve never made it part of the tour before, and I probably haven’t been to her grave in at least a decade if not longer. It may have been because of the conversation we’d had the night before at the bonfire, but it really felt like a flash of inspiration, and even a need to go to her grave. I can’t explain why.

The cemetery hasn’t changed much, and really is quite lovely; lots of beautiful trees, on a hill overlooking the river. I am weird but I like cemeteries, and not in some weird goth kid way. I just find them peaceful. 

I knew about where her grave was. Towards the top of the hill, third row from the back – and it was by a tree – there were two trees in that row, and I felt like it was the second tree – but I wasn’t sure. It also looked different because there were a lot more headstones there now. She used to be off by herself, but the neighborhood was filling in. We walked past the second tree and I knew it wasn’t further down, but I didn’t see it. I stopped and was looking up and down the row trying to remember if it was the first or second tree and said to Gabe, “I can’t find it – I know it’s supposed to be here.”

“You’re standing on it.”

“Oh.”

Sure enough, my toes were pointing directly at her headstone, as if they were dowsing rods.

Jennifer Roesch 

1970-1976

It’s simple. A brownish granite with burgundy and purplish flecks of color and a scrolly flower design. That’s it. It’s sunk in a little, and some moss has started growing on it. I’m never sure how to feel when I am there. Since I never know “how to feel” – I always take stock of what I do feel. 

For the most part I feel empty. Not in the sense of feeling nothing, or being numb – but it is a true sense of something missing. It’s as if you were looking at a bookshelf, and you notice there is a book missing. If that revelation was a feeling, that’s how I feel. There is a space, and it is empty.

I feel disconnected. The stranger, who has a face so familiar, who I see in my family photos – I don’t really know her, and this is where she is buried.

I feel curious. I have some of the details of her illness, but what I have pieced together is just little snip-its. I’ve never asked for a timeline or blow-by-blow of how it happened. It feels too cruel to ask just for my own curiosity and desire to know. I’m curious about what she would have grown up to be like. Would we be close? Would she be married? Would she have kids? The list goes on and on.  I’m curious about where she is now. Is she down there in her grave “sleeping” until her resurrection (as my parents believe).  Is she a spirit still roaming on earth, is she in heaven, or is she just organic matter and not anything?

I do feel sad, but it’s for my parents. I see how it still affects them. When they talk about her, it is with an abiding sadness that has not faded at all in 35 years. 

Gabe asked an interesting question, of how my oldest sister (who was 9 when her younger sister died) felt about her death, and how she deals with it. I don’t know. Again, I’ve never asked. I don’t know why. It just feels cruel to ask.

And then I felt like it was time to go.

We didn’t talk about it anymore, what is there to say, and so we continued on to Lutsen and had a great time.

On our way home, we again had to stop at my parents to pick up the dog. My parents made us dinner, and somehow the conversation came up that mom was feeling down in the dumps. But that she always does this time of year.

It then came up that  she realized her change in mood was due to the fact that it was coming up on the anniversary of Jenny’s death. She mentioned some years were torture and she really spun out of control. Other years she hardly noticed, her mood was always down, but sometimes it wasn’t too awful. Apparently this was a bad year.

She mentioned she was feeling really depressed, and then realized it was October. I didn’t even realize she died in October. For some reason I had it in my head that she died in November. Mom recognized the pattern with the time of year and her mood. Then she said she got upset because she realized she couldn’t remember the exact date that Jenny died. Then her feelings were of being an awful mother, because how could you forget such an important date really spun her.

Gabe piped in with, “We should have paid attention to the dates, we were just at her grave.”

“The date wasn’t on her headstone, just the years.” I mentioned.

“I didn’t want the date on there.” Mom said, and then added, “You were at her grave?”

“Yeah – I just felt like stopping on our way up – and Gabe had never been there…so we did.”

“Well anyway, I was really upset that I couldn’t remember, but then I remembered we had a guestbook from the funeral, and so I went the garage and found her box of things.”

We’ve always had boxes marked with our names in the garage. When my oldest sister got her own place she got her box with all her dolls and horses and school work. When we bought our house, I got my "Joni” box.

But in my parents garage is still one box left, marked “Jenny” – that holds some of her baby clothes, a baby blanket, her baby book, some of her stuffed animals, and the guestbook from her funeral. Mom found all the cards people had sent to her. The notes her kindergarten class had made for her while she was in the hospital, and she found the date in the obituary that was in her baby book. It was October 2^nd. She felt better once she had the date in her mind once again,  but still depressed remembering all the awful details of that time in their lives.

Our conversation moved on from there, and we eventually left for home after dessert.

Once in the car, I asked Gabe if he realized what I had at the dinner table; that we had happened to stop, on a whim, at her grave on the 35^th anniversary of her death...to the day.

“No – wow…are you going to tell your mom that?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“She doesn’t believe in that stuff anyway.”

I’m not sure what that “stuff “ is – but I promise you, she doesn’t believe in it.

I’m not sure I do either. Wasn’t it all just sheer coincidence? My skeptical mind says absolutely. 

Or my logical brain says - it's partially coincidence. It's logical that because she was brought up the day before it made you think about her, so you stopped at her grave. The date was just coincidence.

Part of me wonders though…

I don’t think my mind can go as far as to believe that in some way her spirit spoke to me without me knowing it, telling me to come visit her. That is too far-fetched for me. But I don’t find it so hard to believe that a family has a rhythm to it. That when something so traumatic happens, the family as an organism feels it and even the members of the family who weren’t born yet, are still effected by it. The fact that every fall my mom falls into a funk because of my sister’s death has to have left an impression on me, even if I didn’t notice it for what it was at the time. Even 35 years later, even though in my head I always thought she died in November, deep down – did I know subconsciously it was October? That scar will always be with our family. That spot in our collective hearts will always be empty.

I’m not sure what accounts for the events of this past weekend, (fate, coincidence, or something more), but it happened and that’s all I can say with any kind of certainty. 

That's all I can say about the whole situation. I have two sisters. One died before I was born. I don't know all the details, I'm not sure of how deeply it affects my family, but it does affect us. It happened. Her photos and her grave mark that she was here. I don't where she is now. I don't what all happened, I just know that it did.