We shuffled together towards the blue rectangle in the back of the plane that was our portal to a vast emptiness. The noise from the wind and the engines was deafening. Around us were those who would go after us. But we were the first. Time seemed to slow down as the instructor and I approached the edge, and as I looked down I decided that I really didn’t need this as a birthday present after all. I opened my mouth to tell Angie I didn’t want to jump, but too late. Angie leapt out of the plane, me attached. The noise, the crisp wind reddening my face, the plane full of people and Angie’s body all melted away as I felt my stomach drop impossibly far out of my body. I was about to die.
This is the same sensation I felt when I realized my two-year-old sister, Lydia, was at the bottom of ten feet of crystal clear water. I was nine years old and at the other edge of the pool. The distance was a barrier I couldn’t hope to cross in time. A strangled yell died in my throat as I tried desperately to think of some way to help her. It was a sound of helplessness and despair. I couldn’t save her, and the lifeguard was nowhere to be found.
I have just told you two stories, but only one of them is true. My sister is ten years old now, but the memory of the day she was rescued by a benevolent stranger still makes me shiver with an instinctual fear I have thus far failed to define. There are no words to express how scared I was that day. How I saw part of myself, my favorite part, in danger of disappearing into a clear blue abyss. That was far more terrifying than dying could ever be.
I still watch out for my sister, and I didn’t need a near death situation to reveal how much she means to me, but now I know how much of me would be gone on the inside without her.
