r/GirlDinnerDiaries • u/lucyfur10021 APPROVED✨ • Jun 06 '26
Trigger Warning ⚠️ My sister's last night in this world
Waiting the night (for the last time) in the ICU with her. She went in with a headache that turned out to be a ruptured aneurysm in the brain. She was showing progress after the initial emergency procedure and then had a spasm in the brain followed by 3 cardiac arrests. Tomorrow morning they do the final Apnea Test to confirm brain death, after which they have our permission to take her off life support and retrieve organs for donation. My child free younger sibling life is going to be forever altered now that I'll be the primary caregiver for her two young kids and our elderly parents. I dont even know how to begin processing the grief despite therapy. There just seems to be so much to do and so much to take care of. She was the best big sister in the world and took care of me like a parent. I'm lost without her. Going to hold her hand all night and till she passes and just hope, even as a non believer, that that counts somehow.
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u/DiscontentDonut Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 07 '26
As an oldest sister, let me be her voice for a moment.
You don't need to have the answers. Not right now, and not even any time soon. I know this will be hard, taking on responsibilities and shouldering burdens I had hoped to keep you sheltered from. I want so desperately to take away all of this pain and heartbreak that I see on the road ahead for you.
But you should know that I trust you with my life, and that means I trust you with filling my shoes to care for my children and our parents. I will be with you every step of the way, even when you feel the most alone. I need you to be my hands, and I couldn't think of anyone better or that I would trust more than you.
This wasn't anything that any of us could see coming. In the days ahead, as you cry for me, please know that there was nothing more that could have been done. Everything played out exactly how it was supposed to. This is just my time.
It's not fair. I feel robbed of the chance to watch you grow into the amazing, strong, confident, loving, wonderful person I always knew you were meant to be. We were supposed to get old and crotchety together. But I guess you'll just have to get crotchety enough for the both of us.
I know I can't say the words out loud anymore, but you need to know that I love you. All of the arguments we've had, all the times I thought you were annoying, every time we couldn't see eye to eye, none of that meant anything in the face of my love for you. My platonic soul mate and better half.
I'm asking a lot of you, to be me now that I can't. I know the burden I am putting on you, the sacrifices I am asking you to make, the hardships I am begging you to endure. I don't want to ask these things of you. I want to protect you, to carry this weight as I always have done. I'm the eldest, it's my job.
When you tell my children, "I love you," I want you to hear me saying it to you, too. I want you to feel me speaking through you. I want you to know that every embrace, encouraging word, creature comfort, I want to be there with you, with all of you. I don't want to leave any of you behind.
I am so proud of you, and I love you so much.
Edit: Thank you to everyone for the awards and for sharing how this affected you. It genuinely warms my heart to know there are so many out there who are gifted with empathizing how it feels to have such a close relationship with a sibling. Even for those whom may have lost that someone so close to them, it is still truly such a blessing to have experienced that kind of love, that kind of trust.
For those who have felt broken by their loss, that may have felt left behind or guilty for still being the one alive, you are where you're supposed to be. Your loved one may not have known it was their time, but they knew that you were exactly everything they could have wished you to be, just the way you are. You don't have to believe it, they believed it for you.
Each and every one of you, please hear me when I say this;
You are worth taking the time to grieve. You are still capable and strong, even in your weakest moments. You aren't supposed to have the answers, it's simply not meant to be. You don't have to love yourself to be worthy of love, that's a myth. Your loved one, they loved you right where you are, as you are, unconditionally. That trust in you to be able to pick up the pieces and go on is not a pressure on your shoulders to have it all together asap. It's an investment in you to take this heartbreak and give it meaning.
Take the time you need to process. It could be months, it could be years, it could be never ending. Your story is still going, and your loved one has signed their name on it with a flourish.