There’s No CrossFit for Loss
Joanie does everything first — bridging from Daisies to Brownies, running track, masturbating under the sheets, getting a driver’s license, a tattoo, and a piercing. Also the first to have sex, and thank God she tells me what to expect.
My sister gets sick first too, the terrible, unfair kind of sick. But even in her final emaciated week in the hospital smelling of jaundice and dehydration, Joanie is still trying to be the gracious big sister to Mark and me.
Joanie closes her eyes, solemnly places her right hand over her heart, left hand on top. With a devilish grin she switches the bottom hand to the top, asking in the nasal, singsongy voice of our childhood optometrist, “Better here? Or better there?” Practicing for her own coffin. What can we do but crack up? Oh yeah, other option: sob uncontrollably, but not what Joanie is going for.
One afternoon, Sari the grief counsellor corrals me in the pastel peach family room. She means well as she places a firm hand on my knee. “Dear, losing your sister will leave the hungriest ache. You must prepare.” Oh yeah, you think?
The chasm of grief is plenty obvious, so with intentions as good and possibly as misguided as Sari’s, I decide to apply CrossFit training principles, as if I’m doing my repetitions on kettle bells, weights, and ropes. Before parking, I circle the hospital twenty reps until I can do it dry-eyed. I practice reading Joanie’s funeral poem aloud ten times twice a day. I visit every neighboring florist to drown in the near rot of carnations, roses, and chrysanthemums until I successfully suppress the gag.
There’s no point in training for the distant future though, like the day two years from now, or one year, when I have to walk into Joanie and Scott’s house and greet a new blond the girls call mom. Or even to train for helping Scott clean out Joanie’s closets in a couple of weeks. No, no need for future torment.
When Joanie dies, my heart stalls in mid-flight. No preparations have helped, certainly not half-assed emotional CrossFit. Every moment over the following weeks when I dare to think things are improving, a barb snags me: random FB posts showing old Lego’s or pink plastic dollhouses we fought over, or snatches of songs we bounced to, or just the sight of a hot dog with the works. Joanie detested that yellow mustard so much.
One day six months on, I unexpectedly collapse simply driving past a block of modern glass-and-brick condos. It’s where Joanie, Mark, and I used to see that squinty optometrist with the bad breath, and all I hear is Joanie’s voice echoing, “Better here? Or better there?” And I think, oh, please, God, it was so much better there.
Angela Joynes, a Canadian writer transplanted to Tennessee, is disabled by Lupus and Respiratory Failure. She holds a BA, MD, and a Certificate in Creative Writing (MTSU). Words in FLEAS ON THE DOG, SHIFT, MICROFICTION MONDAY MAG, THE ILANOT REVIEW, THE WEST TRESTLE REVIEW, NATIONAL FLASH FICTION DAY ANTHOL 2023, 2024, FICTIVE DREAM, among others.