Reminiscence

Pip was guilt ridden. She couldn’t meet the eyes of her mother, Kathy, or aunt, Lorraine, after Sinead’s death. Pip couldn’t forgive herself for going to that party and leaving her sister alone to take her own life. ‘I should have stayed home!’ she said to herself over and over again as her mother wailed in the background. She felt responsible for her mother’s pain.

Lorraine and Kathy were both fully aware that Pip was going to the nearby field to drink herself stupid before they left for the night shift. Pip was on her summer holidays of what had been a very stressful year. How was anyone to know what Sinead had planned.

Sinead had a mental health condition, Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (EUPD). She got sick when she was fifteen. EUPD basically meant that Sinead processed her emotions differently. It’s a nasty condition that is usually accompanied with self-harm and suicidal ideation, but everyone, including Sinead’s doctor, were under the impression that she was really coming into her own and doing well lately. That’s why here death was such a shock.

Lorraine sat Pip down on the torn brown leather couch in the sitting room, sitting on her honkers in front of her.

‘How could you, or any of us for that matter, have known?’ she asked calmly trying to reassure her distraught niece who she loved like a daughter.

‘Yeah, but…

‘…. but nothing! Sinead was a grown woman who had obviously been in a lot of pain. Think of her as being free…free from her disorder…free from pain…just, free!’

Pip wiped the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her jumper, Lorraine doing the same.

‘If you’re thinking why you went to a party, you have to remember that me and you mom are thinking why…’ Lorraine sobbed, ‘...why we went to work?’

Pip put a hand on Lorraine’s shoulder softly as she let herself fall to the ground and placed her bum firmly on the floor, her back against the sofa. Pip felt guilty that she had never thought it from another person’s perspective. She was just selfishly thinking of herself.

She got up off the couch and sat on the floor beside Lorraine who cried into her shoulder, Pip gently stroking her hair.

‘It’s not just your loss Pip,’ Lorraine explained, ‘we are all grieving and everyone grieves in a different way. I’ve seen it in the hospital! I’ve been in the room where doctors have broken the news on several occasions, everyone taking it differently!’

Pip nodded in understanding.

‘Look at mom for example, she’s crying on the bed needing Valium to calm her nerves! I’m trying to make sure you both are ok! And you are kicking yourself about a party! That’s three people who are all grieving the same person in a different way,’ she wiped her eyes, ‘can you see what I mean?’

Pip nodded again and rested her head on her aunts shoulder where they cried together for what seemed like an eternity. Eventually, when they both had dehydration from the tears they shed, Lorraine struggled to get up off the floor, the youthful pip up like a light.

‘Oh how I wish I had your knees!’ Lorraine groaned as she eventually was upright with the aid of pip.

Lorraine took pip by the hand and led her into the kitchen. She brought her over to the fridge where her end of year state exams from last year were laminated.

Lorraine asked Pip to look at the sheet of paper that was accompanied by a list for the shopping and pictures of the family all looking happy and joyous.

‘Do you know why this is laminated and on the fridge?’ Lorraine asked.

Pip nodded, ‘Sinead put it there to remind me I can do anything I put my mind to!’

‘Exactly!’ Lorraine squeezed her upper arm as Pip had a flashback of the last year, the year she did her Leaving Certificate.

 

It was tough for Pip having to do most of the studying for the Leaving Certificate on her own, because of covid. She felt like the syllabus wasn’t completely covered in the online classes her teachers were presenting. Pip brought that thought to Sinead, the wise one.

‘Why don’t you just do all of the past papers and memorise every fact on every page.’ They laughed. ‘I’m sure you’ll do great Pippy!’ Sinead said whilst braiding her little sisters hair.

Pip decided to put Sinead’s idea in place and spent every day between Christmas and the exams with her nose in the books. She tried to learn every fact from every page. No one was more of a cheerleader than Sinead. Naturally Pip’s mood dipped a bit because she was stuck to the computer all day doing assignments, classes, and research on the laptop. But she got through it.

‘Why don’t you write out some flash cards of questions, the answers on the back obviously, and I’ll quiz you!’ Sinead suggested.

In the end there must have been a thousand flashcards, each broken down into subject and then topic. Sinead was great at motivating Pip when she was ready to give up. She always told her how proud of her little Pippy she was.

Pip believed that Sinead encouraged her so much not for only Pip, but for herself as well.  Sinead never achieved a full Leaving Cert as she had gotten sick at fifteen and only passed four of the five subjects you needed.

 

Pip remembered the day she got her Leaving Certificate results. Everyone in the house was on edge for weeks before. It was a warm day and Pip got up from a sleepless night at a ridiculous time to sit on the bench in front of the window in the sitting room so as she could see the postman coming. She was hoping he would come early and put her out of her misery.

At 8:10, Sinead bound down the stairs, ‘did he come yet?’ she said speedily.

Pip shook her head ‘no!’

Sinead looked out of the window and disappeared for ten minutes. She arrived back with scrambled eggs on toast. Pip remembers laughing at the fact that Sinead felt toast fixed everything.

‘Why the eggs?’ she asked.

‘It’s brain food!’ Sinead answered producing two forks.

‘You do know I did the exams weeks ago…right?’

‘Oh,’ she looked at the floor, ‘yeah!’

‘But what else would you eat with your big sister awaiting the postman?’ Pip smiled and took a fork.

Sinead smiled back and the pair of them enjoyed their eggs, laughing and giggling, the whole time keeping one eye out for the postman.

It was as Sinead was putting the dirty plate in the dishwasher that Pip saw a man in a green uniform on a bike.

‘He’s here!’ she screamed, ‘he’s here!’

Pip heard dishes clink together as the dishwasher door slammed shut and Sinead shuffled into the sitting room.

‘Go out to him!’ Sinead nudged Pip.

Usually she wouldn’t have been so forward, but today was a big day for Pip. It was the day that could change her whole life!

She wrapped her dressing gown around her and walked out the front door, Sinead staying in the doorframe as Pip ran up to the postman, losing a slipper as she went, and he handed her the brown envelope. She waved it in the air as she ran back to the house, picking up the fallen slipper, and hugged Sinead before they both went in to see what kind of grades she had gotten.

At this stage Lorraine and Kathy were in the sitting room sitting on the edge of the couch.

‘Well…’ Sinead said, ‘aren’t you going to open it?’

Pip waited a moment and did some deep breathing. She couldn’t believe that it all came down to this one envelope, this one letter. She opened it tentatively and, with Sinead looking over her shoulder, went weak when she saw that she had gotten 7 H1’s, the highest grade possible. She stared at the paper in shock as Sinead danced around the room. The world was at her feet and it was all due to Sinead.

Pip was one of the 67 students who received 7H1’s in the leaving cert last year. Something Sinead was really proud of. Sinead cried that day, Sinead cried a lot of days, but that day they were happy tears. She confessed that she knew Pip was smart but never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined the her getting 7H1’s. If she was honest, Pip thought they had made a mistake and put the wrong name on the letter.

 

Pip’s attention was brought back to the kitchen as Lorraine squeezed her shoulder. She then moved on and asked Pip to look at another laminated piece of paper on the fridge, the one that told her what college she got into. Pip had another flashback.

 

‘I wonder if I’ll get physics in trinity…...’ Pip said into the abyss.

‘You have 7 H1’s, you’re definitely going to get your first choice!’ Sinead reassured her as they were back in the living room eating eggs and looking for the postman again.

Pip didn’t run out to the postman this time however, she was rooted to the spot as he deposited the mail in through the letterbox in the front door.

Sinead picked the mail off the ground. There were two letters, one for Kathy and then one for Pip…her destiny lived in this envelope. The path of what she was to study was decided in this envelope. Sinead handed it to her, but her hands were stuck to the bench, her gaze fixed on the cat outside nonchalantly walking by.

‘You do it!’ she said to Sinead, Kathy and Lorraine in the background.

Pip had her eyes firmly shut, and it wasn’t until Sinead read out the letter saying that she got to study physics in trinity could she breathe freely once more. Sinead danced around the room alongside her aunt and mother who all encouraged her to do the same. As Pip rose from the bench, her legs like jelly, she let out a massive scream and joined the other three…oh what the neighbours must have thought!

 

As Pip was brought back to the kitchen, she noticed what Lorraine was doing. She was trying to get Pip to focus on the good memories she had with her sister, the ones she’ll cherish forever!

‘Now then,’ Lorraine started, ‘have you not been to every lecture so far?’

‘Yes’

‘And have you not gone into college every morning on the first train and arriving home every night on the last?’

‘Yes’

‘Do you not dream of one day getting a PhD?’

‘Yes’

‘Do you see where I’m going with this?’

‘Yes’

Lorraine pulled Pip in tight. ‘You are on the track to being someone brilliant…and all with the help of Sinead! She will be with you at every lecture and in that big famous library, she will be looking over your shoulder and metaphorically braiding your hair when you come to work that’s difficult. She will be there, but she will be there in spirit now! It’s that spirit that we have to keep alive!’

Pip nodded and smiled up to her aunt.

‘Now,’ Lorraine started, ‘I know you party hard! And I’m not on board with the weed either!’ she said sternly, ‘but everyone has their vices!’ she smiled. ‘Just try and keep off the weed and please,’ Lorraine begged, ‘please let your liver have a break over the next few days! You want a PhD, not cirrhosis!’ She kissed Pips head and proceeded to go upstairs.

 

Pip looked at the two laminated pieces of paper on the fridge and her eye was drawn to a picture of her sister on her back. She was transported to the day that was taken. They were in the west of Ireland in the Atlantic Ocean and just after the photo was shot, Pip remembers the massive wave that crashed into them, knocking Sinead off of her. She wiped away a tear with her thumb, touched Sinead’s smiling face and headed upstairs.

 

 

picture from pixabay