My Sister, The Warrior

My sister has been a mother, in one form or another, since the day I was born. My mother was a single mom that worked two, sometimes three jobs to keep food on the table and our feet in the latest style of whatever Payless Shoes had to offer. Years later, we joke that Mom kept grounding Courtney so we had a full-time sitter. All those years babysitting her younger siblings groomed her for her true calling in life: motherhood.

Courtney was always different from us growing up. In a family with that many children, our home was a prime example of Darwinism. The fastest eater gets a second helping, the smartest kid gets their report card on the fridge, the loudest child gets the most attention, and so does the naughtiest.

But Courtney was mellow, content to stay in the background and contribute only when she had something to say. She’s so unlike me. I’m arguably the loudest, brashest and (self-appointed) funniest of the group. I’ve never met a group of strangers I didn’t like and don’t know when to back down from an argument.

And somehow, this sweet and mellow sister of mine turned into a warrior. Her battle was against time and unfortunate circumstance. And the reward for her victory was a sweet little baby girl named Piper Grae.

I’ve never witnessed the birth of a child before. I’ve only experienced the “after”. The part where the baby is clean, wrapped head to toe in linens and usually sleeping the deep slumber of a soul that is content.

When I walked into the labor and delivery room on that Monday morning, I would never have been able to guess that a room so small could hold so much magic, joy, anguish and tremendous loss, the kind of loss where you can’t breathe or even fathom of the unfairness of it all. It’s the kind of loss that stays with you for life.

One of the first things I noticed was how well my sister was cared for. Her main nurse made me believe in the humanity of people. Her quiet kindness and compassion made our experience liveable. She doled out hugs, empathy, coffee, tears and pain meds like it was her calling, not her job. By the end of the day, she was part of the family, and there aren’t words that could accurately portray our gratitude for her.

The second thing was that my sister has forged friendships during her time in North Carolina that I dream of. True, deeply-rooted friendships that transcend the superficial. Watching these women gather together to offer support and share stories of their own heartache was nothing short of magical. I was so grateful that they knew how to support her when I didn’t have the words. For the most verbose sibling in the family, I spent the day hardly speaking because the words never came. For the first time in my life, I only felt comfortable saying nothing.

The most amazing thing to witness was the strength of my sister, The Warrior. To watch this woman who was torn apart by grief stay so strong and fight so hard to give her daughter the best life against all odds was earth shattering to me. As humans, we’re inherently selfish and frivolous and so hyper-aware of everything that means nothing. But not her. In these hours leading up to the birth of her daughter, she was grounded and purposeful. Her only hope was that her daughter would be born, and she could fill those moments up with love before she was gone.

Throughout the day, I pulled my chair to the side of her bed and sat in awe of her. There were moments that I just stared at her, memorizing the curves of her face, and wondered how she could take one breath after the other. Sometimes she would doze off, and my mind would drift back to different times in our lives together. I remembered the room we shared on Baty Street, and how she would cover our walls in magazine cutouts of New Kids on the Block. I remembered stealing her M.U.D.D. purse and taking it to school to show all my friends. I remembered eating salt potatoes at our tiny kitchen table on Louse Street. I wondered when we grew up. I wondered why I hadn’t grown up yet. I wondered why, out of all of us, this was happening to her.

And then everything happened at once. She went from being 4 cm dilated to pushing in the span of minutes. The pressure in the room changed. This is usually the moment that you wait for, pray for, walk through outlet malls and eat spicy foods for. But this is the moment we knew we would lose Piper, and it wasn’t guaranteed that we’d even get to meet her.

These moments were excruciating to live through. Sitting huddled up on a hospital couch in the corner with my brother, we kept time with our silent sobs, each tear that traveled down our cheeks marked an eternity. The necks of our shirts were drenched in the few short minutes it took for Piper to be born. In my head, I kept chanting, “This is hell. This is hell. I can’t do this.” But then she was born, and the nurse said the words we were waiting to hear: “She has a heartbeat.” Everything changed. Tears of agony turned to tears of joy. Courtney got her wish — she got to meet her sweet Piper Grae. For 18 minutes she was able to share a lifetime of love.