Dear Baruch

You will probably never read this but that’s ok because while it’s directed at you, it’s not for you. You changed your Facebook status from ‘married’ to ‘single’ barely hours after she died so I cant expect you to ‘get it’. This letter is for me; it’s for my sister.

I don’t doubt for a second that you loved her. I am grateful that she found love, marriage and happiness with you because many people rejected her for being so fat. That’s the truth. Your relationship was certainly passionate; I remember hearing you screaming at each other when you would fight and I remember you crying when she was in hospital. You lead a simple life together, you were never able to give her everything she wanted, and often your lack of ambition or ability to sustain your employment frustrated her but she loved you. I wish you had supported her more in her attempts to control her health. Suddenly you are exercising and eating well, why didn’t you do it when she was trying so hard?

I am not angry with you. I am not angry that you lied and I am not angry that I had to find out about your engagement via Facebook. Your actions don’t surprise me but they disappoint me yet I realize that it is my own expectation that you have failed and who am I to place those expectations on you? There is no point in you mourning forever, my mother is a prime example of what a mess that can be and I have no right to stand in your way of a future, a wife and children. I wonder if you have ever thought how things would be if the circumstances were reversed? How would your family feel if it were you that died and if my sister got engaged 5 months after your death? Would your friends congratulate her? Would it matter if she were planning a wedding when your grave lay bare without even a tombstone? It matters to me.

Do you ever think that if you had died, you would have left her penniless? Does your fiance know that I furnished your home; does she know where all the money you have now, more than you ever had before, came from? Did that money buy her engagement ring? Do your parents remember that they refused to help you when you were stranded in Israel? I brought you home, I put a roof over your head for almost 4 years, and I paid off your car. I did it willingly; I did it for my sister who I loved more than you will ever know. I did it because I had the means. I would do it again. Will you remember?

As I write this, and read through it, and edit it, I realize how little it matters. It’s been eating me up inside but it really doesn’t matter, does it? What matters is that she is gone; some say she is in a better place, others say it was her time. I don’t know. What I know is that everything I have written above doesn’t really matter.

I miss her every day.

I dream about her every night. There is an empty hole inside me that doesn’t want to go away and I’m not sure it ever will. It goes wherever I go. I would give anything to have her back as selfish as that may be. I hope that she is in a better place. I hope that death is not the end. I hope she hears me when I talk to her. I hope she feels me when I cry. There was nothing left unsaid, but there is still so much I have to say.

I miss her every day.