11 July 2012
This is an extract from my childhood diary, 17 days after the death of my eight year old sister, Isobel.
Dear Universe
I think about her sometimes, when the whole house is quiet.
I will be laying in my bed, lonely, curled up like a tiny child, and I will hope that maybe she is sat beside me, stroking my hair, brushing her tiny hands across my cheekbones and temples. I hope that she remembers me. I hope she is safe. Sometimes, I will see a little girl who looks just like her in a crowd of people, and my heart is filled with desperation and longing. Thing is; I know if I push past people, calling out "Isobel! ISOBEL!", it will not be her when I reach the spot she was.
I saw the body. I know she is dead. But I like to think she is out there, somewhere, seeing the world. Perhaps her spirit clings onto the wings of aeroplanes and sailing boats, and she travels to places she always wanted to see. Maybe she is going to grow up and fall in love, do everything that she was supposed to do, live life... but maybe she is going to stay forever in a silvery state of innocence, eight and a half forever, forever seeing the world in the exciting way that children do.
Sometimes I worry that there is no such thing as angels, or ghosts, or spirits, or lost souls, and she evaporated into nothing at 12:08 on the 27th March. I hate to think that she just no longer exists. I hate to think that something jut cut her off, like someone just stopped writing her story and threw it in the fireplace. But I tend not to think about it, because I know that when I walk down a street, she is probably sat on a rooftop with her knees tucked under her chin, watching me and sighing in the way that only she could when I haven't brushed my hair.
One thing I have taken to doing is collecting music for her. Before she died, I was teaching her to play the flute, and I wish we had got further, because she enjoyed I so much. But because I never got to introduce her to classical music, or jazz, or rock, or the sound people's fingers make when they slide up and down an acoustic guitar string, or how numinous you feel when the bass is thudding through your body and your blood flows in rhythm with the music, or how beautiful life feels when you hit a top G and it echoes around the cathedral... I've taken to catching it for her. If I hear beautiful music, I open up my little gold locket, and capture some of the music in it. Then, when the music stops, I shut the locket, and hope that she can hear it.
It's stupid, I know, and verging on insane, but it makes me feel so much better about never teaching her all these amazing things, and I find myself singing for her. It gives me this sense of euphoria and complete wholeness when the whole space around me is filled with noise and vibration and movement, and I have to share it with her, because I can't share anything else with her.
One day, perhaps I won't mind so much that she died, perhaps it will be the making of me, although it feels pretty shit at the moment. But st the moment, she is still as much in my life as she ever was, and that makes me feel good. Eventually, I know I will have to brush it to one side and get on with my life, but at the moment I am happy and feeling safe and not so fragile. I guess I am just picking myself up, dusting myself off, and adapting.
Hopefully, universe, you know where Izzy is. And I really hope she is safe and okay. Look after her.
Yours, caity xxxx
Ps. The last thing i caught for izzy was Yael Naims song 'Paris' because it is simply the best song to wake up in the morning to I have ever heard.
Diary 9, Pages 98-107 • Opuss № I