A terrible fucking tribute to my sister.

Sometimes sisters aren’t born into your life, they’re found.

I found mine when I was 5 years old and the new kid at school.

Stephanie Renner was there in my class, she had cool blonde hair and even cooler were all the My Little Ponies she had at her desk. She was my first friend at school. Not only did she let me play with those ponies but when she broke her leg she always picked me to carry her shit up and down the stairs and eat inside with her instead of going to recess. We were clearly meant to be friends, who wouldn’t want to carry shit around to avoid other kids and play in the classroom without any of the other assholes to bother us?

I don’t have one major or minor life event that doesn’t include her. We played muppets in her basement and always fought over who got to be animal. When we went to middle school and she wore a damn Garfield shirt, I was still proudly her friend. She made me go on the Double Loop because boys were there and she didn’t want me to look like a scaredy cat. I did actually bite into her arm during that ride pretty hard but it helped me see it wasn’t that scary and I learned to take a chance. The first time either of us had alcohol it was in her bedroom and my crazy mom bought it. I mean, to be fair it was just Kahlua but we thought it was real cool. Couple of wild animals with a gallon of milk and some coffee liquor. We got our first jobs when we were 16 together at Sea World where we would sneak into Dolphin Cove after closing and pet the dolphins. She was there for every heartbreak. She was there to break the legs of any human who dare hurt me.

She was there when my kids were born and she took her new role of aunt maybe more seriously than any aunt that has ever been or ever will be. She wasn’t just an aunt it was that I knew, if anything ever happened to me my kids would be fine because she knew every one of my stories, she’d been there for every step of my life and could give more of me to them than maybe even I ever could.

She was our family record keeper. I never had to worry about taking the pictures and documenting anything because she did it all. She has every picture of our lives together cataloged into albums from the time we were babies until 3 days ago. As we’ve grown older I’ve lost a lot of my memories and she was one of only 2 people in the world who could fill in blanks and recall stories for me. A lot of those are gone now because only she remembered.

My traumas were hers, and hers were mine. Sisters.

These kind of loses cannot be summed up in a Facebook post or a blog post. These kind of relationships are documented in books. These kind of relationships span lifetimes.

There are so many stories and pictures and details as with any epic relationship and this will never dignify who she was or what she meant to me or my family but I am who I am in part because of her. My kids are who they are in part because of her. She will continue to shape this family whether the future generations know it or not and that’s ok because any time the glitter flies, we will know it’s because of her.

I will forever be broken. Her nieces and nephews, of which she adopted plenty, will forever be missing something.

Thank god she gave us so much to live on and remember for the rest of our lives to fill us up until we meet again.

HAPPY TRAILS.

You fucking dick. I love you.