What I Learned When My Sister Died

My sister Martha, number 4 of my 10 original siblings, died yesterday at 3:50 AM of liver failure in the hospital near St. Louis. Siblings #10 (Jim) and #3 (Amy) were holding her hands, and I was at the foot of the bed. It was peaceful, yet jarring. Serene, but catastrophic. 

I’m back home today, and I’d meant to go to work today, but my Dear Boss, in all his wisdom and knowledge of me, told me to stay home. He was right - I thought I was okay, but had an unexpected shower of tears at the grocery store in front of the pickles. The man a little bit down the aisle considering his mustard options gave me a confused look and walked away swiftly, which got even more embarrassing when I realized what shirt I’m wearing today – the poor fellow must have thought I was having a breakdown because my favorite sweet baby gherkins weren’t there. 

 
“We may be pickleheads, but we’re the best damn pickleheads in the state of Milwaukee.” - Squiggy, or Lenny, I can’t remember, Laverne and Shirley.

Much like our sister Ellen, #5, who died in 2017, Martha had a life full of tough breaks, some her own doing, some just the luck of the draw. I’m not ready to write about her life, and may never get to that point. I knew what I knew about Martha’s tribulations, but there’s a ton I don’t know, and don’t really want to. She did the best she knew how with what she had, and she led with love and humor in all things, amassing a team of friends and supporters along the way who loved her fiercely. She had a huge heart.

The past week has been full of heartache and laughter, anger and forgiveness, revelations and remembering. But Mom always said Write What You Know, so at the risk of making this all about me, this IS my own damn blog, and so here’s what I learned over the past six days.

Rold Gold pretzels are the best. Red Vines are better than Twizzlers. Bugles are either smaller now, or our fingers are bigger, but either way, you can't really make witch fingers with them like we used to. 

Dogs can make life worth living, and a Bradshaw needs a dog. When I got to St. Louis Sunday and realized I wasn’t going to be able to go home for a while, I asked my younger kid and The Inseminator to take my dogs to the boarding facility run by our vet. I got home yesterday, but they are closed on Thursday, so I went to pick them up this morning, and the wave of joy that hit me when the tech brought Ringo, and then Marjorie, out to my car, was intense. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed them. Martha had a corgi named Dumpling, and we had to be careful talking about her in the hospital room, because Martha missed her so much (and was so often disoriented) that she would get terribly agitated when she realized Dumpling wasn’t with her. Our brother Ben (#8) has an enormous Cane Corso named Xerxes who is clearly the light of his life, and the two of them go on long walks all over Chicago, much like the long walks our Mom and our dog Thurman were famous for in her last years. Jim (#10) and his wife recently got two puppies, and I could have listened to him talk about their different personalities and bouts of naughtiness for hours. Amy and her family recently adopted an older dog who has chosen her husband Rollie (one of the sweetest humans on earth) as His Human, and that’s just right, because Rollie is a man who has always been best with a canine sidekick. All of this highlights the fact that my sister Melissa (#2) - the first of the siblings to get married and delight us by getting the first dog in the family (40 some years ago) - does NOT have a dog, the biggest crime of the century. She’s got grand-dogs, and a husband who will not allow another canine, so I don’t know if that wrong can be righted, but that dog-shaped void is bothersome. 

(Marjorie, Ringo, and Dottie, telling me everything that happened while I was gone.)

My brother Ben is a wimp who can’t eat 15 White Castles. (I couldn’t either, but it’s my job to shit-talk about him, he’s my brother.) We were in the hospital room Sunday night, neither of us hungry, but needed to eat SOMETHING, and it was late enough that the dining options were severely limited. So I introduced him to the art of stress-eating by ordering a 30-slider Crave Case, and we did our best, but ended up putting half of them in the trash, which caused our sister Melissa to ask why the room smelled like the inside of someone’s colon when she arrived for the sibling shift-change in the morning. I do feel a little bad for poor Martha, who was trapped in the bed and no longer eating, and had to have been horrified by the smell, but I’ve decided it was karma for some of the car trips of our youth when she and the others would eat enormous amounts of homemade Chex Party-Mix, followed by hours of the kind of gas that would melt the tiny little hairs on the inside of my nose. Fair warning: dying of liver failure does not exempt you from sibling payback. 

           
There were secret places in the house we all grew up in that I never knew about, including a secret storage area beneath the built-in hutch in the dining room where Mom apparently stowed Christmas presents. This is good news, because I regularly dream about finding secret rooms in that house filled with everything I’ve ever lost, and now I’ve got more fodder. Perhaps in the next dream I’ll find the pull-up bar, the pogo stick, and my Princess Leia action figure, or maybe even my ability to be cool and not overthink romantic relationships. 

Martha had stopped speaking and was mostly sleeping near the end, but we knew she could still hear us, so on the last night, we traded stories and confessions about our youthful stunts, and we got to see a few smiles flicker across her face. It must have seemed odd to the medical staff that there was so much laughter coming from a room with a dying woman in it, but it was exactly what we all needed.

Some genius invented something called a PeriWick, which is like a sanitary pad crossed with a ShopVac and far less invasive than a catheter. Melissa and I could not remember the name of it, and resorted to calling it something that I shall not reveal here, much to the horror of Ben, who is awfully prudish for a man who once invented a game called “FireBall” involving gasoline-soaked tennis balls which he and his friends kicked at one another at someone’s backyard pool. (Wimp-strike number two for Benny.) “Cooter-canoe” was a less offensive option shared by one of the nurses, so you can call it that if you ever need one. 

Ben’s solution for not seeing the medical staff’s check of the Cooter Canoe

Ten kids is too many, and somebody will forever be getting left behind when the cars are being loaded. My parents only had eight quality noses in their sperm and eggs, and those ran out with kid #8. Same thing with good hair, good skin, and normal sized shins, though it’s #6 and I who got the short shrift there. But ten kids is also just right, because when one of our number is failing or fading, there is a whole team to pitch in and do what needs doing. Melissa deserves top billing, as she was the main caretaker for both Ellen and Martha in their final days, managing the overwhelming details of medical care and communicating with the rest of us. Leslie (#1) is the family historian and shared a steady stream of photos from our youth which helped to remind us all of where we came from. Martha was comforted by stuff, and Amy is capably managing the clean-out of Martha’s home - a huge task for which she is uniquely suited. Craig could not make the trip out from WA, but made time for phone calls and video-chats with Martha as she faded, which were a comfort and a joy to her. Sam learned to play on his string bass one of the songs Martha and the sisters loved to sing as young girls and sent her a recording, which we played for her and sang along to, garnering one of her last, sweetest smiles.  Ben and Jim were amazing with Martha, rubbing her neck, making her laugh, reminding her how much we all love her. As much as we can irritate, infuriate, exasperate, and exhaust one another, we all pulled together to the best of our abilities to usher Martha to wherever it is she’s gone. I’m proud to be a Bradshaw, and I know that our Mom and Dad would be gratified to see how their spawn have navigated the world since their departures. 

There’s a ton more to say, but the dogs are both snoring next to me and I’m going to follow their lead and a take a nap. Maybe go spelunking in my dreams to the secret rooms in that big old house in Michigan, where Mom and Dad and Ellen and now Martha are eating Chex Party Mix and playing with my Princess Leia action figure.