Celebrating the Anniversary of a Death
A Tribute to My Sister, Jessica
Over the years, I’ve lost several key people in my life to sickness, including both my parents, my husband, and most recently, my beloved sister, Jessica. I never understood why people called memorials “the anniversary of my sister’s death” or whoever passed away. Shouldn’t anniversaries be reserved for happy occasions? For years after my parents and husband died, one after another, all in the month of January, I hated and wanted to skip the month of January altogether.
After several years of shutting myself away on these “anniversaries,” and wearing metaphorical black — clothes, heart, mind, mood — on those days in history, I decided that anniversaries absolutely should be happy, and I decided to stop being sad on those days, and instead think of good memories I have of the person and toast them with whatever drink I have handy. Today, I’m lifting my glass, filled with Coca-Cola (it’s the real thing, after all!) to my sister, Jessica, the best sister in the history of sisters! I thought I’d share some of our best memories. Probably, some of the humor will be lost, since you didn’t have the pleasure of knowing her, but my hope is that when the anniversaries of someone’s death comes around for you, you can focus on the good stuff, rather than the loss.
