After My Sister Died, Writing Helped Me Heal (Exclusive)

It was the night before our wedding anniversary and we were getting ready to go out. We’d turned in some Marriott points for a night in a hotel. I was fixing my face in the mirror when my sister Debra called. She was cheery, at ease. I had to cut her off after a few minutes. My hair was still wet; I wasn’t yet dressed. We had tickets to the theater. 

“Happy anniversary,” Debra said. 

“Talk to you tomorrow,” I sang out.

The next day, my sister was gone. Heart attack, they said.

I remember those early moments exactly. What came next, however, is less clear. I know I ate, slept, dressed myself. My mother and I pretended to be okay, if only for the sake of the other. In my head, however, I was in a void.  I had never lived a day on this earth without my sister. I had no idea how to continue. 

At the funeral, an older gentleman touched my elbow. The funeral director. “What are you going to do tomorrow?” he asked. I had no answer. He stood over me quietly. His trousers were too long, and the hems were frayed. I stared at his shoes. “You are going to wake up and go into the bathroom. You are going to take a shower and brush your teeth. Then, you will get dressed and take a step outside. And then another step. And then another.”

Impossible, I thought. 

A high school friend sent me a beautiful plant, and I placed it on my patio in the sun. When it bloomed, I posted a photo of myself with the plant. I called it “Debra’s Garden.” More plants came. I assembled them, watered them. I sent thank you notes. 

My mother and I spoke about the weather. About my niece’s new baby. She liked to water Debra’s Garden and talk about the old times when we were all together. I let her mother me. I smiled when she smiled. I answered questions and provided information when requested. But she knew. I was bleeding inside. 

Sometimes, during the night, I awoke with pain deep in my throat — an awful agony that was not calmed by medication nor ice packs. One day while driving, my vision began to shrink, like the end of a movie when the camera reduces to a pinhole. I didn’t hear the horns blowing even as my car rolled into a ditch. 

“How are you managing?” A cousin asked. 

“I’m not.”

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I lost 30 pounds and handfuls of hair. I lost a tooth. I felt like I was losing everything.

Debra married at the age of 49, to a man she’d met online. They both loved the movie The Road to Wellville. “We are silly together,” she’d explained. They were tickled to have finally found love. He called her Wife, she called him Husband. “You should write our story,” she used to say. 

I taped their wedding photo to my bathroom mirror. Debra’s face is shiny, her hair wild. For the wedding, she wore a fringed, layered wedding dress made by a costume designer she’d met in a 7-Eleven. She went to 7-Eleven every morning to get coffee. “You meet the best people in 7-Eleven,” she said. “Real people,” she specified. “Like me.”  

She was part-hippie, part-1950’s housewife. She wanted to get married and raise a family like our mother and grandmother before us. As it turned out, that would be my life, not hers. Somehow, she did not resent me for that. She became my champion. She helped raise my boys, and together we managed to care for our father during his nine-year bout with dementia. We took care of our mother, each in our own way. We laughed all the time. 

I remembered a particular moment when we were in high school, and I had a date to the school dance. No one had asked her; I felt that tension in the air. Debra called me to the kitchen. I was busy worrying about my dress or my hair, and I was angry at her for bothering me. When I went downstairs, she was standing near the sink, a beautiful floral bouquet in her hands. “I made this for you,” she said. “In case your date forgets to buy a corsage.” 

Fifty years have passed since that dance, but I can still see her in that moment: Debra, standing in our mother’s kitchen, holding the corsage out like an offering. I wanted to stay inside that image forever. 

And so, I wrote it down on a scrap of paper. Just a few sentences. It felt good to remember her. I added some details, like what she was wearing (sweats and a headband) and what I was wearing (a full-length dress and heels). I described her face, and how she had a little bit of flower petal stuck to her check. And how her nails were filed to a point because, she’d explained, that makes them look longer.

I wrote about the mouse habitat she’d had as a child, and the pet ferret she had when she was in college. I wrote about how she came to stay with me when I was sick with the flu, making dinner for my husband, and driving my kids to and from school. After I’d finished, I realized: I felt better. I felt close to her. 

It took two years to write Hello Wife. Two years of sobbing until my chest hurt. Two years of creating the characters to tell Debra’s story. Hello Wife is a novel now, a fictionalized portrayal of a person who no longer resembles my sister. Rather, I’ve turned her into a character based on those I’ve loved; people that I miss. Writing about her, creating a world for her, allowed me to miss her without losing myself. Now, when I talk to her photo taped to the mirror, my heart feels full and sated and wonderful. 

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Hello Wife by Lisa K. Friedman hits shelves on Sept. 30 and is available now for preorder, wherever books are sold.