It takes me by surprise when it happens,  I try to keep my breathing even and I can feel my face contort with the tears that won’t stay in.  They always come though, the tight chest and the twisted stomach, the tears that stream into the corners of my mouth.  Sometimes it’s memories of the shooting and it’s aftermath, other times it’s something about a child that connects with the motherhood instincts, sometimes it’s something that seems totally unrelated to anything I’ve been through but still sets me off.  This time it was a TV show.  A medical drama.

We have watched countless medical dramas over the years and there have been many that tug at the heart – as a parent, as a daughter and just as a human being.  But this one, it hit me in the face hard and fast.  And it still hurts.  The story was about a little boy who hurt his wrist in his baseball game and had to go to the ER, mom and little brother in tow.  They addressed his injury and spoke about his seizures all while little brother was coughing.  “He has a cold” the mom said, while stroking his curly black hair, “he just can’t shake it.”  We go on to find out that the little one is a bone marrow transplant survivor and his counts have come back with white blood count over 150,000 and low platelets.  His cancer is back.  All treatments are too painful and his cancer is too far along for any treatment to be effective.  Heartwrenching right?  This is not what got me, we’ve seen this story line one thousand times – on TV and in real life years ago when we knew countless kids in the oncology ward.

No, it was the big brother that broke me.  The doctors and nurses on the show gave the little one a police themed birthday party, sweet and poignent, it was probably a heartwarming scene to watch for most people.  But I could not tear my eyes away from the brother who followed slightly behind watching this event take place, almost an afterthought behind the crowd of people doing their very best to make his brother’s birthday special.  If anyone else saw him I would bet they assumed he was feeling  jealousy or envy that his brother was getting special treatment.  I would guess that most people would think he’s feeling left out and left behind – unseen.

But I know what he was feeling.  He was watching his sibling, knowing he could die, just wanting to help or fix it or make it all go away.  This kid was just an actor but he was me. He was thousands of other kids who have to sit on the sidelines and watch their sibling suffer and fight and be stuck with needles and scream in pain.  And it ripped my heart from inside me and held it in front of my face as I sobbed and shook and my husband held my hand and said we could just turn it off.

And then they added a scene where the little one, after his celebration, has a brain bleed and the mom and big brother are forced to say goodbye to him as he takes his last tiny breath.

I didn’t have to do that.  Thank God I never had to do that.  I watched from behind two sterilization partitions as my sister took long, slow, assisted breaths after her transplant. I ran my fingers down the side of her face, doing my best to avoid the deep purple bruises under her eyes.  But I never had to say goodbye.

Ugh, it was so long ago Katie, why the drama all these years later?

It never stopped.  My role never ended – I never had a curtain call and final bow on being the worried sibling.  It has been constant.  And I am so damn thankful to have this role because it means I am still a little sister…through the pneumonia and diabetes and tumors and recovery and pills and diagnoses and new pains, new pills, new questions, hard news, good news, new doctors, painful tingling – is it something with the nerves?  I don’t feel sorry for myself, for my worry, for my tears.  I just want to help her.

So, when something new happens, a fresh pain that we don’t recognize, we all come together and cross reference our memories of other pains and diagnoses that could help her figure out what is happening in her body now.  And I am never, in my opinion, good enough.  Or there enough, helpful or present or anything enough.

Because I can’t make any of it better.  I am that kid – still, at 37 years old – walking behinf the hospital birthday party, bewildered and unable to make anything better.

I did not have to hear that tiny, final breath.

But I am on the sidelines, forever.  Unable to make it – her – okay.

I can love her.  I can love her intensely and painfully and try to tell her how honored I am to get to talk through another weird symptom because I get to see her name pop up on my phone screen.

And I will always be on her sideline.