Thursday, June 27, 2024 Leslie

I’ve been thinking about my older sister, Leslie, who died 37 years ago today. Brain cancer. What a shock it was to get the diagnosis 6 months before that. I was five years younger than her and she was one of my best friends growing up. I’m sure I’ve written of her on this blog before and of the things we shared and enjoyed together. For one thing, we were obsessed with Dark Shadows, a creepy soap opera full of campy plots and bad acting. But we loved it. She and I used to play jacks together on the kitchen floor for hours. She had such nimble fingers! And with those nimble fingers, she was an excellent piano player as well. She took to it like a duck to water. She loved singing and was in a band for a time in her college years, which was so cool. A band! My sister was in a real live band that had gigs and everything! If you detect a little hero worship there, you’d be right. I looked up to her. She used to write the most interesting stories when she was in high school. We’d gather around and she’d read the next installment to us. As I recall, one of her stories was about a girl who got sucked into a strange subterranean world through the toilet. Ha ha!! Wish I could remember how that one ended. When she was babysitting, all camaraderie was put on hold. “You’re not the boss of me!” When I was in college and taking a ballroom dance class, Leslie helped me develop some new steps to the fox trot for the final exam, since my partner (a guy I didn’t know at all) refused to help me. We would sometimes laugh together over things until we cried. She had a wonderful sense of humor and wasn’t afraid to laugh at herself, too.

When I became a Christian in my early 20’s, it perplexed her, I think. This was something she didn’t understand, nor did she want to. Still, we were good friends, and I wasn’t ready to say goodbye, not at all.
Sometime during those six months between the diagnosis and her death, I wrote a poem to express some of the anguish I felt.

There is a word
Which stuns and shocks
And ruthlessly interrupts
The routine of life.
Nothing seems certain anymore,
Not today, nor tomorrow.

The future, with its
Careful plans,
And passionate dreams
Has been crushed
Beneath the weight of
That one cruel word:
Cancer.

Yet, hope is not extinguished
And faith is not in vain,
For where Christ lives,
Disease cannot triumph
And death cannot win.

Oh Leslie, let Him live
In your heart.

I never shared that poem with her. Why not? I don’t know – it was intensely private to me at the time and I probably feared her response. She knew the gospel but I don’t know if she ever responded to it. I’ll find out in eternity and until then, I am content with the knowledge that God is just, and He is merciful.

Leslie died at age 33. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been without her now much longer than I was with her.

I’m not ready to say goodbye to this post, not at all…