February 27th ~ For My Sister

My sister, Donna would have been 51 on February 27th.
This year, I am sure I would have rubbed it in that she was on the wrong side of 50 and I was remained on the right side of 50. It would have seemed that we were years and years apart. In your fifties? In my forties? Eons apart. My birthday is four days after her's ~ on March 3rd.
When we were kids for those amazingly long four days she would gloat and brag and hold over my head that she was four years older than me. Well, when we were adults and starting to not want to admit our ages, for those four fleeting days I would gloat and brag and hold over her head that I was four years younger than her.
I am now older than she was when she died...
I do not feel that I have lived a full life.
I simply cannot imagine how she must have felt knowing she was being robbed of so many years.
Her husband and children were being robbed.
I was being robbed.
We were cheated.

Someone awhile back lent me the chick flick, "In Her Shoes". About two sisters... The younger sister always feeling not quite up to the older sister's expectations. Not quite up to the older sister's intelligence. Not quite up to the older sister's beauty and reputation. Only wanting to be like her sister and be liked by her sister. Well, I was the youngest out of five kids... Try showing up at high school with the last name of "Stapleton" after four others had already left their mark. Fun. Anyway, at the end of the movie, Cameron Diaz who plays the younger sister, reads this poem aloud in front of a lot of people for her older sister, the sister she admired, the sister she only wanted to impress and the sister she only wanted to be approved by. Something about this poem and the situation in the movie hit home with me. I only hope she can read this from heaven...

i carry your heart with me
i carry it in my heart
i am never without it
anywhere i go you go, my dear;
and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling
i fear no fate
for you are my fate, my sweet
i want no world
for beautiful you are my world, my true
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;
which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart
i carry it in my heart

ee cummings