Dear Anne

Dear Anne,

It’s almost nine years since you took your last breath and flew off to meet Jesus.  I’ve never stopped missing you.

Remember your little black rolling bag that you took to conferences?  I’ve had that bag these nine years and only used it a few times. But recently, as a newly hired adjunct for Rogers State University-Bartlesville, I started using it to transport my notebooks and textbooks for the two classes I teach.

One day, the bag started to catch as I pulled it.  I didn’t know what was wrong until, at home, a large chunk of plastic fell off:  an essential piece that helped keep one of the two wheels aligned.  There was no way to fix the bag, so I threw it away—rather sadly, I must say, for every time I used it I thought of you.

Though I still have many more mementos you left me, I don’t need them to remember you.  How could I ever forget the older sister who terrorized me as a child and who became my beloved friend as an adult?  You were fiercely intelligent, strong, and opinionated.  You were loyal and brave.  Underneath the brazen exterior, though, lived a wounded heart.

The day after you died from ovarian cancer, I cried and howled like I never had done before nor have done since.  It was so hard to have you gone after being by your bedside every day for two months.  Yet I was also relieved for you to be free from the agonizing pain you suffered.  It wasn’t until I had breast cancer in 2016 that I understood more of what you had gone through in your three years of ovarian cancer treatment. 

I miss you every day--especially on holidays when we would call each other--and, of course, on your birthday (June 20) and death day (October 3). Every year that I live past 56—the age at which you died—feels like a bonus gift. 

Someday, we will be reunited in heaven, and I will get to know you as a completely healed person, who God always intended for you to be.  You will be the Anne I always knew, yet also the Anne I can only imagine, free from sin’s harm and bondage.  We will laugh and reminisce and share our exuberance over Jesus, the great healer.

Love,

Your little sister, Janis