Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and You Too!(43)

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My sister and I didn’t get along when we were growing up, but not because she was a bitch. She wasn’t. She was just shy, and I was the asshole. I thought she was lame. She thought I was the Devil. I remember sitting in my room, twirling my make-believe mustache, plotting how I was going to stay one step ahead of her. It was definitely more of a feeling than a specific memory. It was more of an overall vibe—I couldn’t trust her, and I felt like she was always holding me back.

She tattled on me a lot, and I hated that. I’ve often thought that maybe we were just born in the wrong order. I should have been older, and she should have been the youngest. She wouldn’t have felt so threatened by me, and I wouldn’t have stolen her thunder, or been so spoiled. I would have known what it was like to look after someone else instead of always looking out for myself.

    My sister is quiet-funny. She’s not like me. Where I roar, she giggles. I always wanted adventure. Shana always wanted safety and security. She has always had this little-girl feel about her, whereas I was forty the day I was born. Rough, loud, and unapologetic. Shana was quiet, shy, and careful. She was a virgin until she met her husband. I lost my hymen in the womb.

My sister just wanted to be my sister, and it was a giant epiphany for me to come to that realization. She needed my love, and I was being selfish. I lacked empathy. Again.



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One thing that stands out so prominently about my childhood: my mother favored Shana, and I knew it was because Shana needed it. I had no jealousy about that. Shana drove me crazy because I thought she was a prude and a tattletale, but I was never jealous of her. It was more along the lines of, When are you going to stop playing the trumpet, and be cool? I didn’t know then that the trumpet was cool.

Because I wasn’t jealous of her, it never occurred to me that she might be jealous of me. She had been the baby for five years before I was born; she was living the high life, until I steamrolled right over her, sucked up all the energy, and left her in the dust. I didn’t know the feeling of being jealous when I was that young, because there was no one to be jealous of. Shana was always in my rearview mirror. She was never in my way, but I was always in hers.



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My ayahuasca experience came before I started seeing Dan. I wonder what would open up if I did it again, now that I am so much more aware of my blind spots. I know so much more than I did a year ago. I know to wait. I know to listen more than talk. I know silence isn’t deadly—it’s strong. I know that I lack empathy, and I need to look out for it.

When I came out of the hut, I found our director and Molly standing by the monitor. Molly was crying and holding her arms out to hug me.

“It was all good,” I reassured her. “Nothing sad; it was all about Shana. That I need to love her more.”

“It was so strange watching you crying, but smiling and laughing the whole time. I thought for sure you were having a mental breakdown, and we were going to have to carry you out of here on a stretcher, but you just seemed so happy,” she said, sniffling.

That is Molly in a nutshell. If she loves you, you will know it and feel it every single day you’re alive. She is one of nine children, and treats every one of them—as well as both her parents—like they are the eye of the storm. She does this for her boyfriend, she does this for me, she does this for Karen, and she probably does this for a bunch of people I’ve never even met. She shows up when you need her, and sometimes even when you think you don’t—and she stays. She is filled with love. “Stuffed” would be a more apt way to describe it. Stuffed with love.

    I didn’t tell Shana about my experience with the ayahuasca. What I did was change my behavior toward her. I was easier on her, I confided in her more, and I exercised more patience.

When she saw the documentary, she called me and told me she had noticed a change in my behavior and now she knew why.

“That was so sweet,” she told me. “I have totally noticed a difference.”

That’s my sister. Just loving, and happy to be a part of things. Easygoing. Qualities I had never given any thought to, or admired. No demands for an apology. No hard feelings. Well, maybe there are hard feelings, but no feelings are hard enough to erase the deep love and understanding she will always have for me, and that I realized I needed to have for her.

Now I trust her. She trusts me too. It was worth all of that to get here. These are the more vivid memories anyway. The higher notes. I could’ve watched us as children playing in the water for hours.

When we did finally talk about how she had confronted my father about his son Anthony, she said, “I’m glad you saw what happened with Dad. Can you believe how laissez-faire he was about the whole thing?”

“What an asshole,” I told her.

“I almost took the piece of pizza and slapped him across the face,” Shana went on.

“Why didn’t you?” I asked her. “That would have been great for my ayahuasca highlight reel.”



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    There are sisters. And then there are sisters. My sisters and I have covered a lot of ground. It shifts. Simone was always a mother figure, and then at some point our roles reversed and I became the older sister. I don’t know if Simone sees it that way, but that’s the way I see it. She took care of me for so long that somewhere along the way it became time for me to take care of her.