She has a brain tumor.  My sister is having brain surgery right now.

Those are words I don’t want to say.  Once those words pass through your lips, you can’t take them back.  They are in the world. They are true.

But she is back there, behind those doors that keep sliding open for other people.  And I watch them, knowing that my big sister is on an operating table and they are pulling a tumor from her incredible, feisty, intelligent, perfect brain.

If I don’t picture it, I can pretend it’s not happening.  Because when I think about what she looks like right now on that table, helpless, that’s when the tears threaten to spill down my cheeks.  So I sit here with my parents and talk.  We talk about things that don’t matter because if we make it real, I’m afraid we will crumble.  Our little sister can’t be here, as much as she yearns to be right here in this waiting room.  If she were it would be the four of us again, waiting  for news.  Just like it used to be.  Before husbands and kids and adult life. When it was the oncology ward and the transplant ward and the endless waiting rooms and the scent of the hospital soap that never, ever leaves your memory.

Hours pass.  Hours.  She’s been in there for so long that every minute that goes by without alarming news feels like a victory.  Because the one who used to read to me out of books held upside down because we were both too young to read, she has to get through this.  She is the strongest person I know and she has to be okay.  It’s too much, what she has had to endure in her life.  It isn’t fair that she can’t ever feel what it’s like to just be healthy.  I want to take it away from her, any thing, everything that she still has to battle.  I wish I could take it and just let her feel the freedom of health.  No matter how far I reach or how badly I want it, I can’t take any of it from her.  She just has to endure.  And somehow she does.

She doesn’t remember a lot of what happened throughout the years that she battled and beat cancer.  That remarkable brain that they are working on right now blocked many of those fear and pain filled memories from surfacing.  But I remember.  I can still picture her first hospital room and the tears in her eyes every time she lost her hair.  I remember the sound of her screaming when they told her she had relapsed.  I can still feel how soft the skin of her scalp was and how she loved to have her head scratched when she could finally take her wig off for the day.  I know exactly what her hands feel like inside mine, I’ve held them countless times.

I love her.  She is a part of me that I need desperately to feel complete.  There are three sisters and she is the cornerstone, the oldest, the one that has always watched us like a big sister hawk.  Oh my, I love her.  So I refuse to think about what is happening in there, behind those doors.  I just have to focus on what will be when this is all done.  When her glorious brain is safely covered and no one is messing around where they shouldn’t be.  When she is safe.

Safe.

I have to leave, to return to my husband and kids.  It feel ridiculous to have been here in the hospital for so long and not be here when those doors slide open and they finally tell us that she is out of surgery.  But I have a life outside these waiting room walls and I have to get back to it.  So I kiss my parents and keep my phone in my hands, waiting for the next update.

Eight hours have passed since they started the surgery, now they are done.  She is okay.  She is okay.  She will cuddle her son and kiss her husband again.  She will be an aunt and a daughter and a wife and a mommy and a sister and she will be okay.  I will hold her hand again.  I will make jokes and she will laugh her wonderful cihpmunk laugh and I will never forget to tell her how much I love her.  How desperately I need her.  And she will tell me that she loves me more.

My sister had brain surgery.  She is the most resilent person I have ever known.  She will recover from this surgery and she will continue on, because that’s what she does.  She keeps living this life that astounds me.  And as she sleeps in ICU with her head wrapped in bandages and her husband by her side, I lift my eyes to the sky and I thank God for her.  I lift my heart in thanks that I am still the middle child, that my big sister is going to be okay.  There are three of us.  Big, middle and little.  If there aren’t three, the world would tilt.  My world would never be the same.

But here we are.  Three girls, two parents, three husbands and five kids.  We are one.

Thayer Bear, I love you more.  Thank you for being so strong.