by Laura Harrison

Created on: June 30, 2008

My sister died, a horrible death, sixteen years ago. In the years before her death she affected the lives of our entire family, and left a legacy of dysfunction, and pain, for all of us.

She was a tormented soul, who turned to drugs to ease her pain. We were just a regular middle class family. Her problems weren't rooted in her home life, they were deep within herself.

For twenty five years, preceding her death, she ripped our family to shreds. My parents invested all of their energy in trying to save her. This mission destroyed them financially, emotionally, and spiritually.

Before my sister left this earth, she deliberately arranged to leave behind a child.
This child was born with medical and psychological problems that required the devoted attention, of my parents.

We were a family of three girls. This deceased sibling was the middle child. She wrecked such havoc in our lives, that my sister and I hated her. We watched her destroy our mother, and turn our father into a shadow of a man. After a lifetime of watching our parents use all of their resources to save her, their marriage fell apart.

She floated in and out of our home, over the course of twenty five years. We all struggled to understand the concepts of detachment. Just when we would all get comfortable, with her being gone, she would reappear. Her arrival immediately would introduce upsetment and fear for all of us.

Because of their devotion to this child's problems, my parents were completely unavailable to my sister, and myself. When she died, they were both destroyed, and so, we lost them forever.

The reason for her death was aids. After a lifetime of fighting for her life, my parents were forced to watch her die a most horrible death. This experience is one that does leave you changed forever. People cannot recover from trauma that leaves them ripped wide opened, over and over again.

After her death, they were left with her son to raise. This son is the living example of " sins of the parents" He exhibits the same penchant for emotional dysfunction, and substance abuse that this sister did. And so, despite spending the last nineteen years nurturing him, he is pretty much a lost soul also.

My mother grew to hate my father, because he couldn't save her child. My father lost his manhood, as he stood by helplessly watching her die. My younger sister loathed this middle child, as she ate up our mother. I erased her as dealing with her was just too horrific for me to bear. The son she left behind, didn't even know her, and doesn't know that he carries on her legacy of pain.

My mother lives alone, in a house, on top of a hill. She is angry, bitter, and secluded from the world. My father canonized this child, and takes no joy in living. My younger sister created a life for herself, removed from the family. I have nothing to do with my parents, as their outlook on life is too depressing. The son my sister left behind, is in and out of prison. Prison is where he resides now.

So for each of us, I guess you would say, we have never forgotten her. Her memory lives on.
Gone, but never forgotten? She is a testament for all of the cliches used to describe lost loved ones.

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