Thirty two years ago my family was shattered by the death of our 25 year old sister/daughter Deanne Joi. Being the middle child she was the family glue. Her friend Lisa at 23 also died and the lives of her family members of the drunk drivers who killed both women were changed forever. Thirty two years ago I was only six months married, beginning a new life in California where I had recently moved with my then wife Susan. Although neither of us had jobs we were young and full of hope having driven cross country from Connecticut seeking a different kind of life. I remember, I think the last time I saw her, sitting in Deanne’s apartment trying to adjust to hard contact lenses and having changed the oil in our car but leaving a ring on the new filter so that all of the oil leaked out. I was fairly miserable.
Everything is still so vivid in my mind. At the time we were staying with friends Robert and Michele in San Francisco but had gone for the weekend to Sacramento to visit friends Jim and Myra. It was a Sunday April 15, 1984. A call came from Robert saying to call home. I did and on the other end were the distressed voices and tears of my mother and father. My immediate thought was that one of my grandparents had passed. When I was told that my sister had been killed it was pure shock. After a few minutes of thinking that this couldn’t be and hanging up the phone I threw it. Susan and I hurriedly drove back to San Francisco, somehow got on a plane and were met in Burbank Airport or LAX by my friend Beth, her mother and grandmother. Beth had been through her own loss of her 27 year old sister to lymphoma and although we don’t spend a lot of time talking about our sisters these deaths are something which bind us closely.
I always keep a photo of Deanne with me no matter where I’m living. Now she sits in my room near some photos of Yogananda, always smiling in that dress that she wore to a friend’s wedding. Deanne is beaming in the photo and I try to remember her sweet voice. Specifically I remember her saying the name of a child, Benigno, who was in one of her student teaching classes. I remember after she died the call that my parents received from a school in Japan where Deanne would have most likely gone to teach. I remember picking out a white casket, my Uncle Alan, who has since passed away, saying that we made a good choice. I remember my grandfather, who has also since passed, walking and crying and my father trying to console my mother. I remember my cousin Andrew who was very young sitting in the car that his family had rented. I remember lots of balloons being lifted to the heavens once Deanne’s body was lowered into the ground. I also remember my sister Robyn and some other friends going off to the funeral for Lisa. I remember us trying to sleep in the living room, along with my grandmother that Sunday night and seeing Deanne looking at us, going out the front door. Perhaps a dream, perhaps not.
Strange the things that stay etched in our brains, the memories, the stickiness of it all. Life goes on but I do feel Deanne with me no matter where I am. She has helped me through some tough times and I do find myself talking to her. I’m reminded of her whenever I see a white feather, maybe they are from her angel wings but I know that at times there have been feathers without any explanation.
The last time I cried about my sister was when I was in Scotland in December telling a friend about Deanne. This overwhelming emotion touched something deeply within my body.
I can imagine Deanne at 57, she has three children, by now all have finished college but maybe a few remain at home. Deanne’s boyfriend (Bob) when she died is now her husband. They live in a pretty nice house although I’m not sure where but I bet they would be somewhere in California not too far from my parents. Deanne and her husband have traveled all over the world, as she loved to travel. Maybe some of Deanne’s children would be married and have children of their own and my parents would be great grandparents, I would be an uncle and my sister and her husband would have had more nieces and nephews and my children would have some other first cousins very close in age. But of course this is all fantasy, conjecture, nothing more than a dream.
Because it isn’t, none of this came to pass and all we are left with is a hole between my sister Robyn and me, a hole for my parents, one child gone before them. I get that tragedy occurs every day, that people needlessly die, that parents lose their children that siblings lose their siblings, that children lose their parents, that the world loses what could have been. It’s very strange though when it strikes so close to home.
We do go on though, what else can we do? Does it make sense to end our own potential? It doesn’t but there are times when we pause to remember, a birthday, death anniversary. These are mixed in with the memories though of at least, even for a short time, a blink of an eye, the fact that we did know, shared good/bad times and love with our dearly departed. To my last day on earth I will remember Deanne and the many others who I’ve known who have passed before me. Sometimes I wonder if I really did share the same space or if it was only a dream. With the passing of time it might feel that way.
I think that I’ll always miss what might have been, the times that we could have talked to one another, a love and respect that would have grown with age. I wonder how my life and that of my family would have been different had our glue still been around. I certainly don’t know. But I do want to honor my sister’s memory in what would have been her 57th year. My parents did aptly put Joi as Deanne’s middle name. Her smiling photo will eternally remind me of this.
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