When the World Keeps Spinning But You Can’t
A love letter to my sister, written in the language of loss
GRIEF
When the World Keeps Spinning But You Can’t
A love letter to my sister, written in the language of loss
My sister is gone, and I don’t know how to exist in a world without her.
Cancer took her body, but the hospital took her breath. The details matter and they don’t matter at all. What matters is that she was here, and now she isn’t, and I’m supposed to figure out how to keep breathing when breathing feels like betrayal.
Everyone keeps telling me she’s “in a better place.” or that she’s “not suffering anymore.” They mean well. I know they do. But their words bounce off me like rain on concrete because I’m not ready for comfort. I’m not ready for silver linings or lessons learned or any of the neat little packages people want to wrap grief in.
I’m broken. Completely, utterly broken. And I’m tired of pretending otherwise.
There’s this numbness that settles over everything now. It’s not the absence of feeling; it’s feeling everything all at once until your nervous system just… shuts down. I cry until I can’t cry anymore, then I feel nothing, then the cycle starts again. People ask how I’m doing and I say “fine” because what else do you say? How do you explain that you’re drowning in plain sight?
I keep expecting her to text me. I keep thinking I hear her laugh. I reach for my phone to call her about something stupid and then remember. The remembering is the worst part. That split second where you forget they’re gone, and then reality crashes back in.
She was supposed to be here for decades more. We were supposed to grow old and complain about our creaky joints together. She was supposed to meet my future kids, if I have them. She was supposed to be the person I called when our parents finally drove us both completely insane.
Instead, I’m learning what it means to be an only child at 42. I’m learning that grief isn’t linear or logical. It doesn’t follow the neat stages they teach you about. It’s messy and contradictory and exhausting.
Some days I’m angry — at God, at the universe, at her for leaving, at myself for not being able to save her. Some days I’m just grateful we had the time we did. Most days I’m just lost.
People keep telling me she wouldn’t want me to be sad. But you know what? I think she’d understand that I need to be sad right now. I think she’d sit with me in this darkness and not try to fix it or rush it or explain it away. She’d probably make some inappropriate joke to make me laugh through my tears, then let me cry some more.
I miss her voice. I miss her terrible taste in movies. I miss fighting with her about nothing. I miss having someone who knew me before I knew myself. I miss my sister.
And I don’t know how to do this without her.
Maybe that’s okay. Maybe not knowing how to do this is exactly how you’re supposed to feel when your world gets rearranged without your permission. Maybe being broken is just what love looks like when it has nowhere left to go.
I’m not writing this to inspire anyone or to find meaning in meaninglessness. I’m writing this because she existed, and she mattered, and the world is darker without her light in it. I’m writing this because grief deserves to be witnessed, not fixed.
I’m writing this because I love her, and missing her is the only way I have left to love her now.
And that hurts like hell.
In Loving Memory of Brianne Rae ❤️
