I Am My Sisters Keeper

i am my sisters keeper, but i have been slacking on that job lately. who is to say what the responsibilities of this job are though?
the sister i am supposed to keep is one year younger than i am. daryl anne. never forget the e please. she has told everyone who needed her name for anything, "that is Anne with an E", for all of her life. well, at least since she started speaking.
daryl was born one year and one week after me. we celebrated our birthdays together because it was easier for mom to do one party. as a parent now, i understand that, but as a child i always wanted my own party. daryl did get her own party, but that is daryl. when we had our parties together, whatever gift i got was automatically hers too.
mom raised us as twins and people thought we were twins. i hated that. our clothes matched most times. if there was a color choice, it was given to daryl, hterefore i always had to wear pink. i never got the blue dress, or the blue blouse. when daryl's breasts started developing before mine, i had to wear a bra because she would not wear one other wise.
though she was a year younger than me, and even a premature baby, she was bigger than me, and always beat the crap out of me. i remember the three older kids; ramona, david and me, holding daryl down to give her medication to calm her down. it was a pale green liquid that smelled pepperminty. that was in the days before the word hyperactive was used, which has since become ADD. mom would take the dropper and put the medicine into her mouth, which daryl would then to spit out all over who ever was nearest to her face.
it was almost routine for daddy to come home after work and take his belt to her. it made no matter if she had misbehaved that day or not. the beating was for something she might have done that he might not be aware of. the beatings were because "she was too much like him".
i hated when he came home because of that. i would hide myself and cover my ears so i would not hear the belt hitting it's mark. so i would not hear her crying out to stop. today, that would be called child abuse. then it was discipline.
daryl was and still is a vain person. she would not wear anything that had a hole in it, and since we shared clothes, i always got the ones that did have the holes. you had to tell her how pretty she was. she would drink a small glass of apple cider vinegar every day because someone told her it would make her skin beautiful. she would brush her hair forever, then slick it back into a ponytail, so tight we told her that she would look like she was a chinese girl one day. this was all before she was twelve years old even. it got worse after that.
one day, she was combing her hair back into a ponytail. the rubber bands we used to tie our hair back were the thin green ones that came on the newspaper. if they broke, you knotted them and used them again. one day, daryl broke her rubber band and it was too tiny to tie back together. it was no longer than the small i in this font type. she insisted that i tie it while she was holding her hair back into the ponytail. when i informed her it could not be done, she told me to do it or she would beat the crap out of me. well, it couldn't be done, so i told her to go ahead and beat the crap out of me. she pushed me back onto the bed and started punching on me. i was tired of fighting with her, to only lose, so i just lay there to let her get it out of her system. she yelled at me to fight back. i yelled at her no i wouldn't. she kept hitting me and yelling to fight back and i again said no, then she stopped. she told me, it was no fun to fight with me if i was not going to fight back. from that day on, she went and fought with david instead.
if i had only known!! i would have stopped fighting her years before.
when christmas came, we usually got identical presents. from teary dearie to barbie dolls. daryl would take her toys and put them away. boxed up like brand new, in this long file cabinet drawer, that only she could touch. then she would play with my toys. when my toys were no longer useful to her, she would bring all of her toys out. we would all sit on the back porch at her demands, and she would put on a show for us. she would display her toys on the steps, and we were to ooh and ahh over them.
i think the last time we got identical toys was the year that mom and dad bought us dolls that were not babies, but more like toddlers. ramona got the brunette doll, daryl got the blonde doll, and i got the redhead doll. i could not believe that i had gotten the doll i actually wanted! i loved that doll. i kept her hid under my pillow and would sleep with her every night. one day i went to get her, and found that all of her hair had been cut off. daryl was so jealous that i did not mind having this very doll, that she cut off her hair to punish me for liking the doll.
to this day, daryl still has many of the toys that she received when she was a child. she never had a daughter to give them to, but then i wonder, would she have given them to anyone else?
while in highschool, daryl got into drugs. her friends were not my friends and after i graduated, we had a falling out. when i became pregnant, daryl was even more cruel to me. she threatened harm to me and my unborn baby. mom feared for me, so she sent me to live with her sister in florida. i was gone for about 4 months when they must have gotten some type of help for her, as i was allowed to come home and she did not bother me.
when she got her GED after dropping out of highschool, she went to work for the state, and got her own place. after daddy passed on, she moved from our small town of pana to springfield, the capital of illinois. she made good money for such a young person, but she still had a problem with drugs, and began dealing them.
association between daryl and me was pretty much nil by this time. she would come to visit me and my children occasionally. she was good and normally "clean" when she visited.
now i should tell all, i was not perfect in the drug situation either. i had married a drug dealer, so i learned how to smoke marijuana during that time, but daryl was doing drugs other than that. when my last child was born, the drugs stopped on my part, and i did not allow my husband to deal drugs anymore for fear that he might be caught and arrested, therefore, i would lose my children.
when my last child was born, i left illinois and went to florida for two years. when i returned, there was no association with daryl. during this time, she got breast cancer. i was not told. mom had moved to chicago with baby sister terry (who was not a baby at this time) and older sister ramona.
when i divorced, daryl helped me to make ends meet. things between daryl and i were a bit better. she helped me to get back onto my feet financially when i was on my own with four children. when i remarried, she was there. the nice daryl. i began working in springfield and i would visit her after work, but it did not last.
daryl caught her fiance in bed with another woman. she took some drugs and called me to tell me good bye. she was telling me what to do with all her belongings. "give the grandfathers clock to......" i don't know if i just forgot who she said, or just didnt hear it, but then she was telling me i could have her dolls. i drove 40 miles in a panic, hoping to get to her before she was beyond saving. i was a nurse. i had seen overdoses. i did not know what drugs she had taken. i did not know if she took enough to kill herself or was just crying out for attention.
it was such an array of confusion for me. the sister who i loved but hated was in so much pain she wanted to die. i must have called her fiance before i left home. this was in the days before cell phones. when i got there, the door was locked and i could not get in. did she get up to answer the door when i was pounding on it calling out her name? she must have, as no one else was there. she was groggy at first. when i insisted she go to the hospital, she refused. she lay on the sofa and told me, "just let me die". she refused assistance, and when i continued to insist on it, she demanded that i leave. she became her raging self at that moment. the horrid sister i remembered she could be. she demanded that i leave, she pushed me out the door. she called the police to make me leave. even though i told them that she had ingested drugs to kill herself, they still made me leave her.
by this time, her fiance had come. she told the police to arrest me. she told me to leave and never bother her again. the police escorted me to my car, and i went home. i was through with her.
then mom was dying.
i don't know exactly how many years this was after the suicide incident, but it was several. there was no contact between me and daryl. it may have been about 5 years. i had just moved out of the house from my second marriage and was settling into my new home. i received the call from ramona. mom was dying of liver cancer.
i rushed to moms bedside at the hospital in indiana. a 5 or 6 hour drive. how fast can you rush when the distance is so great? i feared that mom would die before i arrived. other family members were arriving. ramona and terry already being there. robbie from ohio and david from down by me in pana. and daryl. all of mothers children were there with her. one or two in the room at a time. mom suffering so. was it pain? we tried to make her comfortable, she kept turning back and forth in the bed. first to one side then to the other. reaching her arms out as she did. grasping at something that was not there. she would cry out, "i can't go. i want to fly away, but i can't go".
mom had alot of indian blood in her. she wanted to fly with the eagles to her resting ground, but she kept crying out that she could not go, she had to wait. i thought that she wanted permission from everyone that it was ok to go. that we would be fine if she were to leave, so i had each of my siblings go in to tell her it was ok to leave. in my nursing training, and years of experience, that is what i learned. many people will not pass until they are given permission.
they all thought i was crazy, but they went in and said their good byes. they gave her permission to pass over and fly with the eagles, and when i took my turn to say my good byes to her, she said to me, "i cannot go, i have to wait on her".
wait on her? "who do you have to wait on mom?" i asked her.
"daryl" was her answer.
"i have to wait on her because no one will take care of her".
in all the troubling times, and problems that this child had given our mom. the hateful things she said and did, mom knew something was going to happen, and mom could not leave her behind. so, on my mother's death bed, i promised her that we would take care of daryl. i told mom that she could pass over with the eagles, because daryl would be all right. nothing was going to happen to her.
when i said that, mom became quiet. she was no longer restless. they were able to move her from the icu into a private room where more persons could sit with her. the next day, in the afternoon, she left with the eagles.
i never told daryl what i told mom. i still hated the sister i loved. i spoke with her occasionally and even visited her, allowed her to visit me, but there was no closeness.
daryl called me one week to tell me that she thought she had a stroke. she said she was seeing a doctor and they ordered a cat scan for her. she was doing ok now. the next day she went to the hospital and had the test done. that night she called me because she was in so much pain, could i please come help her. when i arrived to her home, she was on the sofa in a dark room. her head hurt so bad she could not tolerate light. her neighbor helped me to get her into the car and to the hospital. her supposed best friend was there too, telling the emergency doctor the whole time that daryl did drugs. the doctor said the cat scan done earlier was negative. he gave her some demerol and when the pain eased up, sent her home.
i was now working in a nursing home in shelbyville. about 20 miles east of my home in pana. i was at work when i received the call. one of my daughters called me and told me, "ma, aunt daryl is in the emergency room, she had a seizure."
i immediately called the hospital and they would give me very little information. i finished what work i was doing at the time and informed my administrator i was leaving. it took me almost two hours to get to the hospital in springfield.
when i got there, she was still in the emergency room. she was comatose. a friend called the ambulance early in the morning hours because he had heard strange noises coming from her bedroom. upon checking her, he found her to be thrashing about in the bed, grunting. when the ambulance arrived, she was still having this seizure. they had to medicate her heavily to get the seizure to stop so they could transport her to the emergency department. the emergency room doctor told me that she had the seizure because of drugs. i was stupid to believe him.
then they found the bleed.
my sister daryl, had a major bleed from an aneurysm in her head. this caused her to have grand mal seizures, which they had to medicate her heavily to make them cease.
surgery would be required to repair this bleeding in her brain, but they could not do it today (friday) because she also had a heart attack. so they transferred her to the neurological floor. there i was able to read the records and the only drug she had in her system at that time, was the drug they had given her to stop the seizures that she was having. it had been greater than a week since she had done any other drug, and it may have been even greater than that, as she had stopped the drugs because one of her friends had been arrested, and she feared that he would turn her in and they would take her son.
daryl had talked to me about that some time before, it had just left my mind when all this was happening. but then, i could not be too sure she had told me the truth when she did tell me about it.
daryl lost use of her right side during the seizure. when she awoke, she of course tried to get out of bed. i had to literally sit on her to keep her in bed. i had to let her almost fall to get her to believe me that she could not stand up. i had to tolerate her beligerance because i was keeping her prisoner. she went from not knowing who i was one minute, to cursing me the next. she called me mom, more often than not. she pulled ivs out of her arms. we had to tie her to the bed. i stayed with her for three days. around the clock except for the short while my brother david came to stay with her while i went to her house and showered.
her son went home with my oldest daughter. her dog and birds with a friend.
late sunday, ramona and terry arrived, bringing their children, and made a party out of it. on monday, robbie got there too. no one wanted to sit with daryl for me to even leave the room to pee.
on monday, they decided her heart was well enough for the surgery.
they took her into surgery and of course it was a forever day. when the surgeon came out, she informed me that daryl had died when they brought her out the first time and they had to return her to surgery to stop another bleed. she was still in recovery at that time, but was now stable.
the family now moved to the icu waiting area, taking turns to see daryl. tuesday, everyone went home. it might have been wednesday. i do not have the best memory, and in stressful events, i lose track of time and days.
so here i am. my sisters keeper.
to be cont'd.