Kind Like Katey

I’m a wreck writing this one.

I’ve cried, stopped, walked away, come back, and cried some more. I knew when I started this blog that eventually I’d have to tell you about losing Katey. I just didn’t realize how much it would hurt to put that week into words.

So here we go.

The last time I saw my sister, I didn’t know it was the last time.

That’s the part that still fucks with me.

It was Thursday, October 5, 2023. Katey was supposed to come home with me that day and spend the weekend at my house. My stepdaughter was getting married, and we were having a wedding shower for her and her husband that Saturday. Katey was going to help me get everything ready.

I had work in South Carolina, so the plan was simple. I’d work, take Katey to her doctor’s appointment, and then we’d drive back to North Carolina together.

Except when I got to her house, she looked like shit.

Complete shit.

She was having a hard time even getting up the stairs. I went upstairs with her, and at some point she started crying.

She told me she was scared.

I remember rubbing her back and telling her it was going to be okay.

Because that’s what you tell your sister.

And because I believed it.

We got in the car to go to her appointment, and she was hungry, so we stopped at Taco Bell. Of all the things I could remember from one of the worst weeks of my life, I remember Taco Bell.

Katey loved their fries with the cheese sauce.

So that’s what she got.

Just two sisters in a car eating Taco Bell on the way to the doctor.

I had no idea how precious that completely ordinary moment would become.

At the doctor, we were told there was fluid around her lungs and her heart. They were going to drain it, and she should feel better.

There was no You need to prepare yourself.

No You need to stay.

No Your sister may only have days.

Nothing that made me believe I was about to lose her.

They arranged for oxygen to be delivered to her house, and by the time we got back, the oxygen company was there setting everything up.

So our plans changed.

Katey wasn’t coming home with me after all. She was supposed to have the fluid drained Friday, and then hopefully she’d feel better.

I left.

I remember calling my brother while I was driving home.

“Katey doesn’t look good.”

I knew something wasn’t right. I just didn’t know how not right it was.

And the doctors had been reassuring.

That still makes me angry.

I don’t know what they knew. I don’t know what they didn’t know. I don’t know if things changed incredibly fast.

I only know what it felt like afterward.

It felt like I had been given time that I didn’t actually have.

Friday, they drained the fluid, and Katey said she felt better.

And then Saturday, she came to the wedding shower.

She came all the way from South Carolina with her husband and kids because that was Katey.

She didn’t look good.

She spent most of the party lying on my couch. There were people everywhere. We had family down from New York. I was hosting, making sure everyone had what they needed, doing all the things you do when you’re throwing a party.

And my sister was right there.

I didn’t sit beside her all day.

I didn’t stop everything else.

I didn’t have some long, meaningful last conversation with her.

Because I didn’t know.

God, if I had known.

If someone had told me, April, this is the last Saturday you will ever have with your sister, there wouldn’t have been a person at that party who mattered more than her.

But nobody told me.

So Saturday passed like Saturdays do.

And that was the last time I ever saw my sister.

She and her family went home Sunday.

On Monday, everything changed.

Instead of having the fluid drained again, hospice was called.

Jason called us and told us Katey had about five days.

Five days.

That sounds like time when you don’t know any better.

I needed to make arrangements with work. We already had plans Tuesday night to pick up the puppy we were bringing home, Honey. So we made a plan.

We would go see Katey Thursday.

I thought I had until Thursday.

On Tuesday, we picked up Honey.

There is something so strange about looking back at that now. A brand-new little life was coming into our family while another life—the one I couldn’t imagine mine without—was slipping away.

Wednesday night, I was at my mom’s house. My brother was there visiting, and we were talking about going down to see Katey the next day.

Tomorrow.

We would go tomorrow.

Then the phone rang.

Jason had tried calling my mom first, but her phone was inside.

So he called me.

And he told me Katey was gone.

I collapsed.

There isn’t a beautiful way to describe it.

I didn’t gracefully sink into someone’s arms.

I didn’t say something profound.

I collapsed and cried because my sister was dead.

My little sister was gone.

And I hadn’t made it back.

I didn’t get Thursday.

I didn’t get one more conversation.

I didn’t get to tell her everything I would have told her if I had known.

For a long time, I tortured myself with that.

Why didn’t I go sooner?

Why did I leave Thursday?

Why was I running around hosting a party Saturday instead of sitting beside her?

Why did I believe we had five days?

And there is another question I still don’t have an answer to.

What happened Monday?

Was Katey done?

Did she decide she didn’t want anything else done?

Did something change medically?

Was there a conversation I wasn’t part of?

If she knew she was dying, she never told me.

Maybe she couldn’t.

Maybe she didn’t want to.

Maybe I’ll never know.

There are a lot of things about losing someone that nobody warns you about. It’s not just missing them.

It’s all the unanswered questions.

It’s replaying ordinary moments and realizing they weren’t ordinary at all.

It’s wishing you had paid more attention.

It’s remembering Taco Bell fries and cheese sauce and realizing you would give damn near anything to sit in that car and watch your sister eat them one more time.

It’s learning that sometimes goodbye doesn’t look like goodbye.

Sometimes it looks like a wedding shower.

A crowded house.

Your sister lying on your couch.

A Sunday morning.

A plan for Thursday.

Sometimes the last time is just the last time.

And you don’t know until it’s already gone.

Katey died on October 11, 2023.

I thought losing her was going to be the hardest thing cancer would ever do to me.

I was wrong.