died at thirty-eight years old, this is what her death taught me.

One night while at home in April 2000, my landline phone rang. I answered, and at first, I did not recognize the voice on the phone. The person on the other end continued to speak. Still confused, I interrupted this person and asked, “Who is this?” He said, “This is Allen.” Allen is my brother; he is older than me but closest in age to me, in regards to all four of my brothers. His voice was not his normal voice; something was wrong—he was upset and needed to gather himself for a moment before he could explain why he called. His voice was so different, and honestly, I could not understand half of what he was saying. Finally, he began to speak, and this is what he said: “Something has happened to Susie, and she is in the emergency room, and it is bad!” Susie was our older sister. It was a Thursday night; my children were small, and their father, Jack, and I were still married. My brother Allen could not get in touch with our older brother Lynn, who lived in the same small town as us. When Jack went to fuel up my van, he stopped by my brother Lynn’s house to tell him what had happened. While he did that, I packed a small overnight bag because I had no idea what I was in for.

This is a sensitive story. Meet you on the stoop to share with you; bring something to drink, you are going to be here for a few minutes.

Jack returned to our house, van fueled; he had spoken to my brother Lynn and told him what we knew thus far. At this time, we lived about two hours away from our sister’s. Yes, I said sisters; we had another older sister named Wanda, who lived close to our sister Susie at the time. Allen was so upset and said, “I cannot drive,” now you will get a better understanding of why I prepared myself to drive. Mentally, he was not capable of driving, and he was also making phone calls the entire drive. I was the best choice to drive us. Our oldest brother had a business and had to stay back to sign employee checks the next morning. Lynn planned to do the drive the next morning. I said goodbye to my little family, and I was on my way to pick up my brother Allen, who lived minutes away.

I cannot explain how upset my brother was; it hurt me to see him like that. He got in, and off we went. I drove over the speed limit knowingly; we did not have any solid answers about what had happened to our sister; we were just told to get there. Generally, when anyone hears that, your mind immediately defaults to the worst-case scenario—well, mine did. Although I had to stay calm and positive, because Allen—well, let’s just say he was neither. Let me note that guys have feelings too, and it is okay and normal for guys to cry. My brother Allen is one of the nicest guys you could meet in this life. I believe God gave you emotions for a reason—to use them. My brother cried, and when I say we prayed the entire hour and a half, we did. We even practiced what we would say to a State Trooper if I was pulled over for going over the speed limit. Our cell phones were ringing the entire trip to the hospital where my sister was. My brother’s pastor called and prayed with him. I do not recall a lot about that trip, but I do remember how focused I was on getting there.

I do not remember what time we arrived at the hospital; we parked in a parking lot adjacent to the emergency room and walked in. My brother walked calmly and quietly while I asked the hospital personnel where we needed to go. We found our way to where she was. Our mother was there, my sister’s husband was there, and I saw our sister Wanda in the hallway. These are the only people I remember at this point; I do not recall seeing my brother-in-law Mac at this time when we first arrived. I know my stepdad, Dave, was there too, but I do not remember seeing him when we arrived. I believe the immediate connection was to my mother Jan, my sister Wanda, and my urge to try and understand what was going on. Most of all, I wanted to see my tiny older sister Susie.

Mother was upset, Wanda was all positive and somehow laughing during this, probably to cover up her sadness. It is not odd to me that I only noticed my mother, my sister Wanda, and Allen. I loved them more than others, and that is who I focused on during those moments. Then my mother took us to where Susie was, and we finally got to see her. We learned that Susie had an aneurysm, as far as they could tell at that time. An aneurysm can be defined as a ballooning and weakened area in an artery. They can occur in several places in the body; Susie’s ruptured in her brain. They later informed us that this was a spot on her brain that had probably been there, possibly even from birth in her case.

When I got to her room and saw her, she had a shunt, some call it a tube or catheter, but they called hers a shunt. I cannot recall if it was on the left or right side of her head; I am almost certain it was on her right side. I will explain more about that later on in the story. It was there to drain the blood and relieve pressure on her brain. I recall that they had shaved a portion of her hair to do this procedure. I walked over to the shunted side of her head and said, “Girl, if you could see what they did to your hair, you would not like it one bit.” The nurses laughed, my brother was still crying, and I do not remember my mother’s reaction. I cannot recall where Wanda or the others I mentioned above were.

I went on to ask several questions, so much so that I knew the nurses were exhausted with me; I was calm and collected, oddly, but scared. Her doctor, who was present during my interrogation, said, “Well, you are asking all the right questions!” I was not sure if that was a compliment or shade, of wanting me to shush. However, they all were extremely nice and answered every one of my questions. We were told that Susie was going to be transported to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for further close care. I am not certain if you have ever had anyone in the ICU, but let me say the following: yes, there are many monitors and machines, but it was an extremely quiet place, and the lights were dim; but do know it was nighttime. She was only allowed two visitors at a time.

ICU has visiting hours, and I noticed that my sister did not have to adhere to those. We were allowed to stay, well, two of us at a time, during the night. I began to understand what was happening; the medical staff knew the statistics of the survival rate in regard to what had happened to Susie. It was my turn to go on a visit again, and I tagged out my sister Wanda, and she left. Susie was about five feet tall, weighed a smidge over a hundred pounds, her feet were a size five, and her ring size was four and a half, if I recall that correctly. She was a small-statured person. I remember her tiny feet and hands so vividly still to this day from that night.

They had placed my sister in a medically induced coma to help with the pressure on her brain. As I watched a machine breathe for her, I walked closer to her upper body on her left side, enveloped her little hand with one of mine, and then lifted her little left eyelid and saw her fixed and dilated eye; I did the same to her right eye, and it was the same. I kissed her on the forehead and told her how much I loved her. I believe that I knew at that moment that my little big sister would never make another every Friday morning phone call like we did every week. Yes, we were both at work during those phone calls; it was our time and the only time we had the luxury of talking to each other. Yes, we did our work and caught up on each other’s lives. I was married and had four children who needed all my attention, and she had a life too. It was our time, and it was every Friday morning.

We were all exhausted and refused to leave the hospital that night for obvious reasons. No one slept, and two of us were at her side at all times. Daylight arrived, the sun came up, and my brother Lynn had finally made it to the hospital. The doctor came in to tell us that he wanted to do some testing on my sister, and he had scheduled it; the staff would be transferring her soon to have these tests done. The transporters came and took Susie on her way to get scans. They encouraged us to use the cafeteria or take a nap because it would be a couple of hours or so before she would be back in the ICU.

We did not sleep, but we did leave the ICU waiting room. I believe some went to get a coffee and something to eat; there was money put in pop machines to get a pop. Allen, Lynn, and I went to the main waiting lobby, and we caught Lynn up on what had happened. My brothers talked about, I am not sure what, and I kind of wandered off and acted like I was just walking around to stretch. It was my way to distance myself and call my sister’s work number at her office.

Why call her work phone when I knew she was probably in the middle of getting a scan? Yes, it was a Friday morning, and that is when we normally talked. Yes, I did know she would not answer my call! However, I did know her voicemail would pick up, and I could hear her voice. I am not sure how many times I called her work number just so I could hear her voice. People do silly things, and you can call that silly if you want, and it does not bother me if you do.

The waiting was over, and Susie was now back in the ICU. They told us the doctor would be making rounds and giving us the results. My sister had a daughter named Katy Sue; Sue is a family name. It is my mother’s middle name, it is my sister’s middle name, and she passed it on to her daughter. Katy was fifteen years old, just days away from being sixteen. I was there when the doctor came by. Mac, my brother-in-law, was there, Wanda, Mother, and I recall. The boys were close by. Katy and her dad Harlin were there as well. My mother’s husband was there too, I think; I just can’t remember where he was at that moment.

The Doctor came in and told us that Susie had no brain activity, but he did it in such a subtle way. I am not certain some members of my family understood what that meant; others got it immediately. I understood things were never going to be like they were before; it was all different in less than twenty-four hours. One thing that no one wanted to do was tell Katy. The nurse, who was a male nurse and amazing at his job, asked Mac if we knew if my sister wanted to be an organ donor. He said, “I am not sure,” and that he did not want to make that decision; he turned to me and said, “You can make that decision.” This is when I thought, she had a daughter; although she is not an adult, I felt she needed to be included in this decision. I finally told Katy that her mother was not going to live. She began a denial process, and that was not the news she wanted; none of us did, but life eventually gives way to death.

In my sister’s situation, she was on life support, and they could keep her there until the process could be done. I knew she would never breathe on her own again. My mother commented that she would take care of my sister, no matter what state of being she was in. I asked my mother, what would you want us to do if you were in this situation? I could see in her eyes that she saw it from a different angle and understood.

I eventually began to talk to Katy about organ donation; I had to, like I had no choice. There was nothing more they could do to help my sister live. I know it seems so instant, but there is a timeline and a process for how they handle organ donation. I explained to her that they wanted to know if we would like to allow them to harvest her mother’s organs. No one objected that Katy needed to be involved, and they all seemed to agree it was whatever she wanted. Without hesitation, she immediately said NO; she did not want to donate her organs. I explained it the best way I could to a broken-hearted fifteen-year-old girl in her mother’s ICU room, all while the ventilator was pulsing air in the background of our conversation.

There lay my little big sister, who I knew was going to take her last breath as soon as they stopped her ventilator, a fifteen-year-old niece so broken, and my mother, who sat quietly right behind where I was standing at that moment. Again, Katy said no to organ donation. I asked her to imagine if someone had a brain that they could donate to her mother and she could live on; wouldn’t you want that? I know they do not harvest brains to donate to another human; they harvest them for research, but I was trying to explain the significance of organ donation in that aspect. Katy said, “No” for the third time, and that conversation ended there. I respect her decision; even if she was fifteen, she was doing what she thought was right at that moment in her life.

I knew what the outcome was going to be once they stopped the machine that was breathing for my sister. I walked up on the left side of her bed. I held her little hand, closed my eyes, and began to thank God for my sister. It got quiet because I could hear only my voice. I thanked Him for giving her to me and our family. I must have prayed a lot of other things, but I can’t recall it all. I was thankful I had her as a sister. I kissed her little forehead again and thanked her for being a good big little sister. I told her I loved her and I hoped to see her again someday. I stepped away from her bed and knelt in front of my mother, who was sitting in a chair. I said, “Mother, I am going down that hallway and I am not coming back in this room! If you would like to go with me now, that is fine; if not, you do what you want.” I have never lost a child, so I did not know or want to even fathom what she was feeling. In my mother’s soft voice, she said this, which was so profound to me, “I was there when she took her first breath, and I will be here when she takes her last breath!” I am a mother myself, and I understood.

My heart was in pieces for my brother-in-law, my niece, my mother, my brothers, and my sister Wanda. Susie and Wanda were best friends. Wanda lost her best friend that day. They were almost fifteen months apart in age. They shared the same mother and father; they grew up closer than I did with them. Susie was full of sass, and Wanda was funny. They helped each other; they were sisters to the core and fought like it too. It was a bond like no other, so my heart hurt for my sister Wanda more.

I was thirty-one when Susie went to heaven. Her dying taught me so many things. Time’s a thief. Life goes so quickly, enjoy even the uncomfortable times, they are life too.  If you are not happy, it is up to you to change things, it is no one else’s responsibility.  Never take for granted weekly phone calls. Resting your eyes means you are asleep, not just resting your eyes (there is a funny family story behind this).  I miss her a lot.

My sister Wanda and I went to the funeral home when they had her ready for us to see her. We did not like her hair, so we made it a little bigger and covered up where they shaved her head at the hospital and painted her toenails too. She was buried in her little western shirt and her little black Rocky jeans. Linda Sue Niblett was born June 10, 1961, and she died April 7, 2000. April 7th was Susie’s dad’s birthday, ironically. I did not ride in the family car on the way to her funeral; my kids’ dad, Jack, drove, and my friend, Susie Pate, rode with us. On the way to the cemetery, “Crocodile Rock” by Elton John came on the radio. It seemed that was a little sign from my sister.

I cried at the hospital when I thanked God for my sister, and I did not cry again about my sister dying until about two or three weeks later in the middle of the night, all alone on my sofa in the dark. Grief is different for everyone, and it is different for each person that you love who dies before you. I see grief as love for a particular person that you can’t give to them because they are no longer alive.

I got angry with God when my sister died so young when there were so many mean people still here. Why her, I would often ask, why was her time up already? Take someone who is doing bad things and leave her. Well, that is not how that works, I have come to find out. It was no surprise to God that I would get angry. I was so mad, and finally, he helped me understand things from a different angle.

I had three sisters; my oldest by age, Barbara Lynn Morris, and I shared the same dad. Linda Sue Niblett and Wanda Leigh Niblett, we three shared the same mother. All three of my sisters have passed away. Each one of them impacted my life in their own unique way. I was also gifted with four brothers; two have the same father as I, and two share the same mother. It was a his-and-her family dynamic. My dad had three, my mother had four, and then they had me. I am the only child between my mother and father, and I am the youngest of all my siblings.

The days are long, but the years are short. We are all going to die someday; I believe death is a part of life. Find peace in your heart, radiate love… and know tomorrows do not always come. Thank you, Susie, for continuing to teach me during your passing. I miss you loads and will always love you, your younger, bigger sister. My sister’s photo above still remains on my fridge to this day.

My sister’s daughter Katy is all grown up now. She is married to her husband Jake, and they have two beautiful girls.

Thanks for stopping by the stoop, they say only the good die young.

Kindness starts with me.

tlramsey