My Sister's Necklace

When I was three years old, my mother gave birth to a little girl.  She left this earth on the very same day she entered it.  I was too young then to remember it, but I’m sure that I was old enough at the time to acknowledge that something had happened.  My mother was always open in talking about the baby girl she lost and I don’t remember any specific time when my mom first told me about her.  Yet when someone asked how many siblings I had, I’d always say my one brother; it’s not unusual to only include living siblings when talking with strangers, but it was never intentional, I never thought to include the child my parents lost in infancy.

About a month before my wedding, my mother handed me an envelope.  In it was a hundred dollar bill that she had tucked inside that envelope twenty years ago.  And she told me it was from my sister.  My mother put that money away for me after my sister passed away, because she was sorry that I wouldn’t be able to have her at my wedding as my maid of honor.  That’s when it hit me, I did have a sister.  And for the first time in my life, I thought about all the moments I didn’t have with her.  I was never able to help my mommy change her diapers.  I didn’t get to be her big sister and protector in school.  There were no late nights up discussing boys.  And she couldn’t be the maid of honor at my wedding.

Then I realized that while I never thought of the missed moments, my parents had, everyday of their lives.  Now that I’m a mother, I have a greater understanding of how difficult it must be to lose a child, of how the loss must continue to haunt them.  Every Christmas, every happy family occasion, every family picture, thinking of the child missing.  And every year her birthday would come around.  Her day of birth, the day of her death, the only time they were able to hold their baby girl. 

I took the hundred dollar bill to a jewelry store and bought a beautiful necklace.  Then I went to my parents’ house to show my mother, who handled it with tears in her eyes.  And when I put it around my neck on my wedding day, for the first time in my life, I felt the presence of my sister.  She wasn’t my maid of honor, but she was there with me on my wedding day. 

Now when people ask how many siblings I have, I still say one little brother, but I think of my little sister too.