My sisters.

[gottawonder]

If you've followed my posts, you'll remember "trainwreck" sister, and that her partner is most likely dying.

You'll remember that she has a hoarding problem, and addictions to alcohol, lots of over the counter pain killer type stuff, cigarettes. She has problems holding a job, maybe she can get disability because she now has COPD and serious back issues, and she lives with her partner in a very run down trailer in a ghost town in the middle of a bleak, bald stretch of fields.

With her partner likely to be gone before too long, naturally the issue is whether she will choose to do anything differently afterwards, or whether she will just drink herself to death in her shithole trailer.

The task of making her life even a little better would be monumental. If she chose to move, she would have to find a place she could afford, but also she would either have to confront her hoarding issue. If she were to need to live in an apartment, her hoarding would get her kicked out immediately. If she got another house or trailer, it would soon be full. She would have to do something with her current hoard (though in all likelihood, she's going to just walk away from it).

My other sister N, dearly loves trainwreck sister, and has a tough time keeping some emotional distance from the situation. Not that any of us in the family have stopped loving trainwreck sister, but at some point you recognize that nothing you do will help. N however, still talks like all my trainwreck sister needs to do now is kick her addictions, get some counselling, clean up her hoard, stop hoarding in the future, and start a new career. Let's not mention that my sister N has pretty serious issues of her own that she hasn't really been able to fix, so she should know a little better how grandiose her plans for trainwreck sister are.

Truth is, after her partner passes, either trainwreck sister will live, or she won't. I don't imagine that she'll stop hoarding or drinking, and she's likely not gearing up for a new career. She might find a way to patch together something that will work. She might find another partner who is willing to support her and be co-dependent with her. No shortage of lonely alcoholics out there.

It's really hard not to feel like there's something we should do for her. We've all helped her move at one point or another over the years, hauling truckload after truckload to either the dump or her next home. Cleaning up rotten food in the kitchen, molded hoard out of the basement. Taking out dozens of dead house plants and piles of "recycling" that she's saved up. Throwing bags of mouse infested clothes and bedding onto a bonfire in the yard. There isn't much point in giving her money unless you're going to give her money forever. There's nothing you can throw into a black hole that will fill it.

My sister N knows this on some level, but suffers a lot for trainwreck's pain. We all do.

N is also starting to really feel her own mortality. She's the sister I mention a lot who has a great deal of health problems, and thinks that vaping non-stop means that she quit smoking. I know it bothers her a lot that trainwreck's partner is the same age as N, and that so many of our family, Mom, our dear Aunt and Uncle, N's partner, are all getting quite old.

I don't know that anyone really deals with death all that well. I don't think anyone deals with the death of a partner, a parent, a beloved pet, a sibling, a friend, their own death, with much real grace. It's this uncontrollable, looming force that stares at us from the eyes of everyone we see, and from our own mirror.