Together we’d move tall shelves full of books and framed photos without emptying them first. Tracey could walk into a room and know immediately how things should be arranged. All those mediocre sandwiches at Subway because for a while that’s all she ate. The way she’d ramble on my voicemail, always starting with, “Hey Meg, it’s Trace.” The way she laughed and her grumpy face of displeasure. I wish you could feel the way I loved my sister. My great grandmother’s ring, the one Tracey wore every day, sits alone on the table beside the chair where she died. I can’t make myself watch the gurney covered in a white sheet. The transport vehicle arrives to move my sister’s body out of the apartment. She hands out her business cards in case we have questions later. “Your sister probably died late on Wednesday,” she explains, citing her body temperature, etc. The medical examiner comes to talk with us. This uneasy balance went against my clinical therapist training and my desperate need for my big sister in my life. I had to back off to keep her as close to me as she would allow. My follow-up question of whether she had a plan also went unanswered. We were in a 50s-themed diner in the mall eating cheeseburgers and fries. Months before, I asked her point blank if she was suicidal. I want to confront her jagged, brittle energy, ask the questions I’d avoided out of an unspoken bargain we’d struck. I want to return to the last day I saw her, chase her down for the hug and kiss goodbye we didn’t share that day. “Is there any reason to suspect foul play?” When the police arrive, they enter the apartment and begin asking questions. These are the hardest phone calls I’ve ever made. 911 answers and I panic that I can’t remember her address. Lisa feels for a pulse on Tracey’s wrist and recoils from the cold skin. We had no idea how long she’d been there. She was sitting in a chair in the corner of her living room. Turning the corner from the entryway into the living room, Lisa screamed. With shaking hands, Lisa unlocked the door. Tracey being pissed off was better than the alternative. “I don’t give a fuck how mad she is.” Lisa doesn’t usually swear, so I found this oddly comforting. As we hurried up the short stairwell I said, “She’s going to be so mad if we’re waking her up.” Lisa and I arrived at the same time and parked side by side. My chest folded in on itself in fear seeing her apartment lit up was not a good omen.
I turned into the apartment complex from the back entrance and saw lights on in Tracey’s place. She would either be furious at us for waking her up at 10:15 p.m., or she was dead.
There really were only two possible scenarios. “I have a key.”ĭriving the 10 minutes across town I added up the lack of contact, her unusual silence. “I’m going to her apartment,” I told Lisa on the phone. I felt an urgent, pressing need to go to her. Intuition rang a warning sound in my veins and tied knots in my belly. We quickly surveyed our five brothers by text. I texted Lisa, to see if she’d heard from Trace that day, but she hadn’t.
Curiosity turned to concern as the day went by without hearing from her.īy 8:30 p.m., when another attempt to reach her went unanswered, I knew something wasn’t right. I called repeatedly in between client sessions, but didn’t receive even a half-hearted text reply back to say she’d received my calls and didn’t want to talk. As a mental health therapist in private practice, I was hard to reach during my work day. On Thursday, I left voicemails in the morning and midday. That week, I called her first thing Wednesday and left a voicemail. We each left from lunch, Tracey walking out a different door than we did. Each of us sisters filed her stories away to dish about them with each other later. Engaging with Mom, trying to connect with Trace. Lisa and I shared the neutral role that day. Mom was in an uncharacteristically good mood, telling stories and asking questions about preposterous things because she couldn’t remember if they had really happened or if she had dreamed them. I found myself feeling annoyed at my sister for her surly attitude. I remember Trace was rude to the server, frustrated at her being slow and a little bit clueless. She was miserable, wildly unsettled in her own skin. What I remember is Tracey’s energy that day ― her words were sharp, her tone brittle. That week, we had lunch together on Monday. I talked to her almost daily, but always on Thursday. Her seven siblings were her primary support she had a check-in call with one of us each day. For most of her adult life she fought through loneliness, addiction and depression.
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