Loving Someone You Can't Save - My Sister, Kelly

When my little sister was about eight years old, one of her favorite things was to come to my house to “clean”.

I use the word clean a little differently than Kelly did.

I’d walk in to sparkling, bare countertops, not a crumb in sight, and absolutely no idea where anything had gone. My toaster disappeared. Cooking utensil holder vanished. The sugar bowl was mysteriously gone too. She hadn't thrown anything away. She'd simply found a better place for it. A place that made perfect sense to her and no sense at all to anyone else.

I'd open cupboards for days afterward, laughing every time I found another one of her "improvements."

That was Kelly.

Even as a little girl, she liked things a certain way...neat, orderly, and minimal. As she got older, it became her art form, and I was reminded that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

As a grown woman, I would open her closet, and everything had its place. Clothes were organized by color, by purpose, by season. Hiking clothes over here. Work clothes over there. Shoes lined up like they were little soldiers waiting for inspection. If we went camping, she'd bring a broom. While the rest of us were setting up tents or starting a fire, Kelly would be outside sweeping the dirt around her campsite. We teased her mercilessly.

She didn’t care. She'd just laugh that big belly laugh of hers and keep sweeping.

That contagious laugh. I can still hear it, and it still makes me laugh. It started somewhere deep inside her and rolled right out into the air. You couldn't help but laugh with her, even if you had no idea what was so funny. 

She wasn't supposed to be my sister, but she was destined to be.

She came home from the hospital when I was twelve years old, wrapped in a blanket and handed to my mother three days after she was born. She had been adopted, and from the minute she arrived, we became soul sisters.

As a twelve-year-old, I wasn't another little kid competing for attention. I was old enough to fall in love with her almost the way a young mother does. I'd lift her out of her crib at night, lay her on my stomach, and just look at her. Sometimes she'd fall asleep there. Sometimes she'd stare up at me with those bright blue eyes, completely content.

We shared a bedroom for years. I adored her.

When I was with my friends, Kelly tagged along more often than they probably wanted, but none of them seemed to mind. They loved her too. She had a way of fitting into almost every situation without making everything about herself. She was curious about everything. She wanted to go everywhere. She wanted to be included in life.

When I married at twenty and had my first baby, Kelly loved coming to our home. She loved my son. She loved playing with him, making him laugh, following him around, helping however she could. If people were nearby, that's where you'd usually find Kelly. If it were children, she’d be down on the floor with them.  If it were adults, she’d be right in the middle of an intelligent conversation. 

She was still little herself, and she had this enormous capacity for joy.

One night, when she was three, and I was still living at home, we'd watched a movie where a woman gave birth using Lamaze breathing. Later, when I tucked Kelly into bed. She had a question.

"Diana?"

"Yeah?"

"When I grow up, do you think I could have a baby?"

I smiled and told her that maybe someday when she grew up she would.

I kissed her goodnight and walked out of the room.

A few minutes later, I could hear this strange sound coming from her bedroom.

"Whew... whew..."

I stood outside the door for a second, trying to figure out what she was doing. She was practicing her Lamaze breathing.

She was lying in bed, getting ready for childbirth…at three years old. I laughed so hard that tears ran down my face.

She never did anything halfway. If she loved you, she loved you all the way. If she decided to learn something, she threw herself into it. If she was going to clean your house, you'd better be prepared to spend the next week hunting for your spatula.

As an adult, she became that same kind of person.

She started her own successful tile business. She guided river trips. She climbed tall rock mountains most of us would only gaze at in awe. She was tougher than nails. I remember one amazing rafting trip when she jumped out to help pull the raft ashore and landed the wrong way.

She looked down. Her big toe was pointing sideways. We all gasped.

Kelly looked at it for about two seconds, and with her other foot, kicked it back where it belonged, and kept on doing what she was doing.

She was strong, capable, adventurous…and solution-minded.

People were drawn to her. 

More than a thousand people came to her funeral years later, and that wasn't because she was a celebrity. It was because she had made people feel seen, heard, and loved. 

She collected people everywhere she went. Friends. Climbers. River guides. Family. Kids. Animals loved her just as much as people did.

She had this direct way about her. You always knew where you stood with Kelly, and somehow it never felt harsh. She could tell you the truth without making you feel diminished in any way.

She also carried more empathy than most people ever knew. If someone was hurting, she noticed. If someone felt left out, she included them. She generously handed out hugs, love, and support in many ways.

If an animal needed rescuing, she'd probably already loaded it into her truck before anybody else had finished talking about it.

I wondered if people who feel everything deeply spend their whole lives trying to figure out how to carry it. Kelly’s feelings were BIG and intense…and sometimes too big for her to handle.

I saw it, even back then, but I didn’t know what it was when she talked to me about it.  I just listened…and tried to understand so I could help her. After all, she was my little sister…funny, brave…and the one who made every single day a little bigger, louder, and a lot more fun.

If you’d asked me what Kelly’s future looked like, I'd probably have told you she'd become a guide somewhere in the mountains, a veterinarian, or an explorer. She had too much curiosity and life in her to do anything ordinary. Addiction wasn't even a word that belonged in the same sentence with my little sister. 

When Kelly turned 13, things began to change.

At first, it didn't seem all that different from what a lot of teenagers do. She made some new friends, found different interests, and started pushing boundaries and testing limits.

Then the phone calls from school and parents of friends began. We all started sharing notes, and her explanations became harder to believe.

One day you're laughing because your little sister hid your measuring cups while she was "cleaning" your kitchen. Then, without remembering exactly when the shift happened, you found yourself lying awake at night wondering where she was. Or if she was safe.

I used to think addiction was something people chose. I also used to think that if someone wanted to stop badly enough... they would. 

I loved my sister with all my heart. And I didn't understand addiction at all.

I wish I could tell you exactly when I knew this wasn't teenage experimenting anymore, but I can’t.

There wasn't one big turning point when all of us looked at each other and realized our lives had changed. It happened the way so many life-changing things happen. Slowly. One decision after another…hers. A different group of friends. Staying out later. Stories that didn't quite add up. Little things that didn't feel right until one day they added up to something impossible to ignore.

Kelly had been adopted at three days old. We always knew that, and so did she. We also knew very little about her biological family except that addiction had been part of that story. Over the years, we wondered if her birth mother had used drugs while she was pregnant. We never knew for certain. We just knew addiction had found its way into Kelly's life very early, and so it became part of ours too.

My brothers were on their own path by then.

Jimmy had left high school early and joined the Army. When he came home, he wasn't quite the same young man who had left. My brother Rick eventually drifted into that world too. Both of them worked hard. They were skilled heavy equipment operators who could always find work. They weren't the picture most people carry around in their minds when they think about addiction. They got up. They went to work. They earned a living.

Their personal lives, though, slowly unraveled, and, of course, that started to affect their work lives too. At the time, I didn't understand any of it. I remember saying things that make me wince now.

"Just stop."  The Nike commercial, “Just do it,” echoed in my mind. It seemed so obvious to me. If drugs were ruining your life, then stop using them. It sounded simple, but it wasn’t…not even close.

I would realize how little I understood about addiction, but back then I thought I was being practical. I thought I was encouraging them. Now I know, I wasn't offering understanding. I was offering judgment disguised as common sense.

Kelly was different from my brothers in many ways.

My brothers hid what they were doing from me. Kelly told it like it was. 

She never lost that huge personality. She was still adventurous. Most people didn’t have a clue what was going on behind the scenes. I did. But she still climbed rocks that terrified the rest of us. She still laughed until she cried. She still had friends everywhere she went.

Most of the time, Kelly hated what was happening to her.  She wanted to be clear-headed, in control of herself and her life, and someone others could rely on.

There were times I wanted to shake her.  Times I wanted to cradle her. Sometimes both in the same afternoon.  Until you’ve loved someone who’s addicted, it's almost impossible to explain the complex combination of fierce love and complete helplessness.

That was me…after we collided with Kelly’s addiction.

There were many times when she had enough of her own behavior, was ready, and made the decision to get clean with the support of rehab,  Alcoholics Anonymous, and her family. Once, it lasted seven years. Seven years. She rebuilt her life, rebuilt her business, maintained her relationships, and we began to believe that this time it really was behind her.

Then something happened. Life.  Disappointment.  A breakup.  A heartbreaking loss. An opportunity. Maybe biology caught up with her. Whatever it was, she found herself back in the fight. It didn’t make sense to me.

We spent a lot of time together in all those years.

Sometimes we'd talk about regular life. Family. Work. Her daughter. Great books we read and music we loved. Plans for another adventure. Sometimes we’d talk about all the challenges.  Sometimes we’d sit in silence.

Other times I could tell almost immediately that something wasn't right.

I developed a peculiar radar.  I picked up on her pauses. Kelly’s blurry words and the stories that don't quite fit together piqued my senses, as well as the weird sparkle or sometimes the emptiness in her eyes.

I didn’t want to believe what I was hearing…and seeing. So I’d ask another question. Then another. Mostly because I was hoping I’d discover I was wrong.

I wanted to be wrong every single time.

There were nights she called while she was driving. I'd beg her to pull over.

"Please, Kelly. Just pull over."

She wouldn't.

I’d ask her where she was.  She wouldn’t tell me.

She thought I might call the police.

The truth is...I would have, but not because I wanted her arrested.

Because I couldn't bear the thought of someone else's family getting a phone call because my sister had crossed the center line. I also knew that if Kelly hurt anyone, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself…but she wasn’t herself right then.

Every decision felt impossible. Do I protect Kelly? Do I protect everyone else? There wasn’t an easy answer.

I drove her to rehab more than once. My mother and I cared for my niece when Kelly knew she couldn't.

There were moments when she wanted to be helped… with everything she had in her. One of those times we stayed together in a hotel while she tried to get through those first miserable days without drugs or alcohol.

I can still see her in that room…anxious and walking the floors. She couldn't sleep. She talked for hours…about everything…about nothing.

About 5:00 in the morning, I lied to her.  

Told her that the people in the next room called the front desk and complained about the noise.  

She was upset that she disturbed them. 

“I did?”

She started crying.

Ten minutes later, she finally fell asleep.

I lay there listening to her breathe. She looked so peaceful. I was watching my baby sister… so vulnerable… and finally sleeping like a baby.  I cried without making a sound because I knew how hard she was fighting.

And I knew love couldn't fight this battle for her.

When she woke up, she prayed. She promised herself she was done. She wanted this so badly, and I believed her. Watching her that morning, actually seeing her struggle, changed something in me. My belief that “if there’s a will, there’s a way” may not always be enough.  She needed a lot more help than just wanting to get better.

I was in over my head. I was exhausted, and my heart was breaking. Kelly finally decided to go to rehab again.

There comes a point when loving someone and saving someone become two different things.

I didn't know that when we were kids. I certainly didn't know it when I was telling my brothers to "just stop." I hadn't learned yet that addiction asks impossible things of everyone it touches.

I loved my brothers.

I loved my sister.

I also discovered something that took me years to understand.

Love gave me every reason to stay. Understanding showed me where I’d been wrong.

Next week, I’d like to tell you why almost everything I believed about addiction turned out to be wrong. 

Love is ALL there is,

Diana