DUMPSTER

DUMPSTER


For a long time, I was obsessed with fixing my sister’s life. In addition to
enbattled family relationships and nasty fallings-out, she lived in a mess.
There were piles of old fashion magazines and closets full of clothing with original sales tags, never worn.  The one useable bathroom cupboard had so many beauty products stacked in it, the nails were pulling out of the shelves. Nobody was allowed to use the darkened living room except the dogs, who peed on the rug. The kitchen cabinets were like booby traps: open the door and canned goods would shoot out at your head like missiles. The ovens were used for storage. The cellar flooded. and everything down there was moldy. The roof leaked and the windows
were painted shut. The toilets couldn’t be flushed and the washing machine drain emptied out over the front lawn.

I’d lie in my bed 500 miles away and obsess about how I’d sort her out. Over and over, I’d dream of pulling up a dumpster under her bedroom window and throwing all the junk down into it. I was resentful that my sister, the squeaky wheel, got not only attention from our mother but handouts of thousands and thousands of dollars. The fact is I also gave her money every month for years. I paid her dentist. I paid off her credit card. My silent little mantra went: “How come nobody ever helped me?” I knew she shopped for stupid stuff and I knew she was getting botoxed. All the while, I was getting burned up.

When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I wrote a short piece I called “Dumpster,” in which I described in detail the purge I’d conduct. Though I never showed it to anyone, somehow producing it got me off the hook. I quit thinking about the mess and I realized there was absolutely nothing I could do about it anyway.

I decided to stop trying to fix her life.

I also changed the script. Any story I ever told about her used to begin, “My poor sister…” I being, of course, the one who wasn’t ”poor”. It took years for me to realize how patronizing and condescending this actually was. It dawned on me I was doing the old routine: “Make them look bad so by comparison I’ll look good.”

I began describing my sister as a hero. Instead of talking about her loono boyfriend and joyless life, I described how she took care of our mother. Instead of saying what a manipulative scammer I thought she was, I’d talk about her devotion to our demented parent and her loyalty to someone from whom she got less than zero in return.

The more often I told the story in this new way, the easier I felt in my actual conversations with my sister. I told people about her hilarious ability to mimic anyone (including me, no doubt) and her great sense of humor. Instead of commenting on her lack of friends, I described how close she was to her three children and their families.


During a prolonged and frightening sickness, my sister lived alone. She took care of her animals and she visited our mother often. She constantly battled with the health care establishment and she recovered enough to put in a glamorous appearance at her son’s wedding. She drove around in a fancy car. She shopped.

As she was dying, she kicked out a social worker she couldn’t stand. She admitted the hospice people about two days before she died and she summoned the strength to say goodbye to her children and to tell them who (and who not) was to attend the funeral. She died in her home, a place she loved, and she did not die alone.

My sister, the hero.