INDEPENDENCE DAY - A FAREWELL

Sharon Davis
November 30, 1942 - July 5, 2026

My bookend sisters sit across from each other, one with her head propped into a cloud of soft white pillows, her eyes half shut. A plastic thread loops from ear to ear, carrying oxygen to her nose. The other sister, the one just a year younger than me, sits at the foot of the bed, her hands gently and rhythmically caressing the mottled skin of our oldest sister. The skin is thin with age and weary from the push and pull of Lipedema. The youngest has nurtured those legs daily for years now, urging the flesh to let go of the unwanted guest enflaming her body. There is no holy oil. Only the willing hands of a devoted sister, set in motion by divine love and endless grace. I watch from the red chair in the corner.

It’s quiet. The only sound an occasional bird outside the open door, and the repeated sigh of the oxygen machine in the closet. We are past the time of visits. We sisters hold vigil. Night and day. Like midwives on the other end of labor.

We dwell here in this holy space, her three youngest sisters, fluttering in and out as she lies laboring. Stupid pancreatic cancer taking over the space in her body. Arrogant narcissistic heartless tumor that kept himself hidden until the pain reared its head. By then we had passed the point of eviction. The ER doctor, probably tired from a long shift, was brutally matter-of-fact, standing there with his clipboard, letting her know it looks from the contrast scans like she has end-stage Pancreatic Carcinoma.

Home now, she lies in the bed that her mother had used in her own final journey. It is more hospitable than hospital beds, and Libby has used the best white sheets and down pillows to make her comfortable. We have filled the large room with recliners and other chairs, so that she is never alone. Never. Sometimes it troubles her, all this flitting in and out of her space. So, we insist on quiet when family comes.  And then she will raise her eyebrow and speak from the silence: “Get all those fans charged so we can have a party!” 

But if people are visiting in the family room, she can hear their laughter and it hurts her that people are laughing without her. It’s impossible to find the sweet spot, though we keep trying.

What she wants, for the moment, is a perfectly chilled bottle of Mexican Coke, where you can hear the fizz and see the rising mist when the cap is removed. “Hand me Mom’s church key,” she will say. “Don’t do it for me. I want to do it myself! Part of the experience is the pop and the fizz and the chill. Make sure the ice is super hard and chipped just so. And let me pour  it over and hear the sound.” Only she can’t swallow anymore. “It’s not just about the Coke,” she tells me, and I understand.

She has allowed her best self to rise up, though she can still be rather bothered. At one point she said “Quit trying to control what little life I have left!” 

She has accepted the prognosis and set her feet on the path without complaint and with great courage and wit. When I asked her to come back and tell me what it felt like to not live in an oversized body, she responded:

“Well, I’m stuck in here for the rest of my life… for, like, a week.”

Sherry and Libby
The eldest and the youngest.

We are blessed because on this end of her journey she is kind and grateful and endearing. That’s in general. Libby still gets the brunt of it now and then.  She is her safe person. And she takes it like a champ. Sherry always follows her irritation with; “I’m sorry.  You need some rest, and your back hurts. I’m sorry.” And Libby will insist she is fine. “Here now, shimmy up to the edge of the bed and put your arms around my neck.” Then my little sister with the bad back will lift our big sister and shift her to a new seat. Libby will tell you, and she would be correct, that she is being sustained by forces unseen.

Kate at her bedside.

Kate has flown in from New York. She is a gift. Her steady presence, quiet assurance and strong arms feel safe to her beloved Aunties. And to her mom. She watches and learns and gracefully moves into the dance without disturbing the rhythm. By the mercy of our Lord the air conditioning in the upper level of our house has quit working, so Kate has shifted from our house to Libby and Sherry’s house in the heat of this summer. Fortunately they live one house away from us and it’s just a few short steps to get to each other.

We've been neighbors a long time.
Sisters longer.

Later, at her bedside, I watch our dying sister’s chest rise and fall in short, shallow breaths, the pulse of her life slowing to a purr. Memories swirl around us. They roll in like thick fog from the San Francisco Bay, stretching over to her condo in Oakland … (so swiftly you had to run in and grab a sweater.)  Blurred images of my early childhood combine with more recent, fully documented memories. The recollections of our generation do not have the benefit of photos on cell phones to trigger them. Back then only the extraordinary events seemed deserving of the expense of camera and film and developing. The average person would think those of us from the era of black and white were stiff and posed, because that is all they see in print. They would be wrong. We were fluid and funny and sensitive. Only home movies seemed to capture the flow, and those were rare, usually set over the backdrop of Thanksgiving Day, family reunions or Christmas morning. Without photos as triggers, my memories are visceral, coming from the inside out rather than the outside in.

5 Sisters
L to R: Sue, Cori, Libby, Sherry, Ann Marie

Bubbling up now, holding her cold hand and counting her breaths, I close my eyes and feel myself balanced on her hip. I am small, probably not yet walking. My legs straddle her hip like a pony. Sherry was 16 years old when I was born. The eldest of seven children, she became our second mother. In my memory her arm is wrapped around my back and she instinctively rocks side to side. I am safe there, in her arms. The sound of her voice is familiar, and soothing. I know if I am hungry, she will nourish me. If I am tired, she will lay me down in a safe place and pat my back until I drift off. Sherry instinctively nurtured us, we three little girls that came one right after the other at the tail end of a big old batch of kids.

Sherry is Chief of this tribe.
L-R (youngest to oldest)
Libby, Cori, Ann Marie, George, John, Sue, Sherry
(We have always been blessedly odd.)

When I had just turned five years old my father had been promoted in the Atomic Energy Commission and was transferred from the site in the Arco Desert of Southeastern Idaho to an office in Pittsburgh PA. I have long carried a core memory of walking up the steps and into the airplane out on the tarmac as we left our small hometown of Shelley, Idaho. I feel myself weeping, little girl tears rolling down soft pink cheeks, as I search the air through the small window near my seat on the airplane. I know it cannot be real, logically, but in my mind, I look out the frosty window and see my oldest sister, my protector, standing beside our dog Schatze, waving and mustering a smile through her tears as the plane pulls away.  Sherry, by then, was a college student and stayed behind. Dad had told us that people in the city didn’t have dogs, which was cruel, don’t you think? How could we know, without the internet to tell us, that where we were going was a friendly space with lawns and woods and running spaces that a German Shorthair Pointer would love. So Shatze and Sherry remained in the west and we flew eastward.

Our growing-up years in Pittsburgh included packages from Idaho, then from San Francisco with Sherry's name on the return label. Little treats, or books, or three matching dresses for Easter. Large taffy suckers from The Nut Tree, chocolate from Ghirardelli Square, a whole assortment of Blue Diamond Almonds, long before you could buy them anywhere except California. She wrapped her love, stamped it and sent it via Air Mail.

The three little girls on Alameda Beach outside her condo.

Summers, we would sleep on the floor of her apartments, or her condo, and inhale salty beach air, peruse one of the five giant Cost Plus stores in the city, or visit the Gunne Sax outlet to get the hippest fashion for church or prom. She knew which vendors had the freshest crab on the Wharf, and which flavor of Loard’s ice cream was the best. She was cool before we knew she was cool. She took sailing lessons in San Francisco Bay, danced hula with a Hawaiian dance team,  drove a lime green Datsun Z sportscar. She was a professional woman who had paid her own way through college and advanced degrees, becoming a Speech Language Pathologist. She helped a full generation of kids learn to communicate. When she moved to Utah, after retiring, she continued to use her skills with kids teaching them to communicate with their Lord in Sunday morning lessons. Images of her swirl in my head as I sit at her bedside, my knees tucked against my chest as I lay my head on the pillow holding her arm. Her hand is cold, her breathing is shallow, and I know we cannot go back now that we have come this far. The love seeps from my eyes and disappears into the feathery cloud.

Our two California sisters - Sherry and Sue.
Sue still lives in CA. We feel complete when she comes to visit.

Sherry had the San Francisco vibe.

Her dad was overseas as a war soldier when she was born.
He sent her this hula outfit.

She had magical hips!

Ann Marie and Libby in Gunne Sax dresses.

She was a cool hip cat in her sporty Z

She never thought she was beautiful.
She was wrong.

……

July 4th, 2026. The Fireworks have mostly ended. We have not seen them, but we can hear them, from places distant and near. We have watched her chest rise and fall all day and into the night while outside the rest of the country celebrates 250 years of Independence. Just after midnight, on the cusp of this new era, our sister takes her last short breath, with we “three little girls” surrounding her. Sixteen short days from diagnosis to death. This day she claims her own blessed independence.

........

When we were kids and it was Friday night and we could stay up late, sometimes drifting into sleep before the show was over, I remember being awakened by the network signing off for the night. Once upon my lifetime the world recognized the need to rest. In black and white, and later is Techni-Color, the announcer would  recite this poem against the image of an Air Force jet streaming heavenward. I don’t know why, but the blurred image, and the muffled voice recording, and the memory of lying on the living room floor comes sifting through the sorrow. Our sister rises through the mist, weightless and free, into the streaming sunlight. We salute her, trusting she will throw her arms wide open when we follow.

.......

High Flight

by John G. Magee Jr.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Fare well, beloved Sister.

Dying eggs with Quincey and Jonah

Her last birthday.

She has lots of fans in our fam.

Nutcracker with Miss Q

She has a social conscience.

The 5 sisters at a Sisters Gathering in southern CA

Her annual neighborhood Halloween Party.

Best grand-aunties ever!

This Primary student is now in college. (Frankie)

Best hug giver!

A true friend.

... and a beloved teacher. In school and in church.

My daughter Sarah invited Sherry and Libby to Joe's birth.
It was so beautiful, and gracious of Sarah.

She was a good giggler!

Seeing her handwriting and her respect for children swells my heart.

Sisters.

Our neighbors placed luminaries around our houses tonight,

Our friends Dick, Janet and Cara Baldwin
quietly cleaned up Libby and Sherry's flower beds
while we held vigil inside.

We covered their kitchen with love.

I hung this sign outside her room, because she wanted to talk so much it wore her out.
I wrote the sign on her work stationary.

Four Farmington sisters.
We live within steps of each other.

There's an empty chair at our table now.