Remembering My Sister on World Cancer Day

Today is World Cancer Day. A day that sadly gets overlooked unless you are someone whose life has been affected by cancer. Let me start off by saying I have never had cancer. But I have been affected by it.

Cancer stole from me, my best friend and amazing sister Karen at the very young age of 27. And cancer also took my dad 4 years ago. Cancer isn’t a very pretty disease. In fact, it takes away not only a person’s physical strength but their diginity as well.

Within 6 weeks of being diagnosed, my sister left this world. Not because she wanted to but because she couldn’t breath. I honestly believe that if the doctors had listen to her when she said that she was having trouble breathing for years instead of attributing it to her asthma they had actually run more tests then they might have been able to prevent a lot of her sufferings.

My sister was my world, other than my husband and my girls, my sister just got me. She accepted me as I was and didn’t try to boss me around or change me into a mold that she thought I should be in. She just let me be me. Which is why I still to this day call her my best friend. I can’t help but wonder what kind of aunt she would have been to my girls.

I know they love my other sisters, but there is no doubt in my mind that Karen would have been their favorite aunt. Because they are so much like the person she was that it isn’t funny. The same sense of humor and in fact my oldest daughter, Maddie, who I was pregnant with when she died and who coicendentally she is named after, has her dimple.

At the time of her death, Karen was just 27 years ago, she had her whole life ahead of her. Yet she was taken away so young. I still miss her everyday. But I will be forever thankful that she was in my life. She taught that being myself was okay and that she loved me no matter what. And I loved her unconditionally as well even though when we were outside playing in the backyard as kids, and I would have to use the bathroom. She would catch me and sit on top of me until I peed myself. But hey that is what siblings do? I still loved her in spite of all that.