Death, Dreams and the Maiden

Come back, Carole.

On your birthday, January 3, my friend Sharon posted my first blog. I cried most of the day, too distracted to make heads or tails of it … our sisterhood cut short, our manuscript only half of itself without you. I need you here, to complete what we started …what we began but could not finish together.

You still come in dreams with that bright smile of yours. Just days ago I hugged and hugged you, you standing in the living room in front of a grandmother clock that doesn’t work, you in a long beige linen dress and a funky shmatelich hat with flappy cloth plumes of beige and brown, matching your dress. You tall and elegant: zany and stately, blending the two like no other.

I called out to my husband, “Look she is really back, come see Carole … .” But he was in the shower and could not hear me; my own gruff voice, hoarse from screaming, awakened me … and you were gone again, my sister.