ON SISTERHOOD
A tribute to my sister, Sophie
‘“I miss her and I miss her and I miss her,” she began. “And I wait for the feeling to end because every other feeling has ended, no matter how intense, no matter how hard—but this won’t. There’s just no end to the missing. There was life before and there’s life now.’
—Coco Mellors
How do you capture a person that you know so intimately, they are almost a part of you? Someone with who you can communicate almost telepathically? A world of meaning exchanged in just a glance. Someone with whom your bond is knotted so tightly that you share their pain, and they yours? I mysteriously experienced raging toothache the night Sophie first had her braces fitted. A fact that she remained unconvinced by – and had little sympathy for.
After three decades of sisterhood, everything about Sophie is knowable and familiar to me – from her cool blue eyes, to her fingertips and every childhood scar. Every feature is catalogued inside my mind. So perhaps this sounds like a simple task. An easy subject matter for any writer, putting it to paper. On reflection, the weight of having to memorialise a person who is so much a part of me, and has been for my whole existence, is overwhelming. Words do not seem enough for a relationship that exists in another dimension, somewhere beyond language. So rather than describing, I’ve decided that I’m going to have to show you…
Our story starts on a mid-summer’s day when, at age 18 months, I burst into her life. A life of apparent luxury, where she would sit propped up on a triangle pillow leafing through magazines and having grapes peeled for her. My arrival was something of a thunderclap. By all accounts, I was a little more infatuated than her. Sophie used to get my parents to tell me off because I was staring at her too much and it was freaking her out. Perhaps I was mapping out the person I wanted to be. There was never a cautious period of making acquaintances or getting to know each other. We were integral to one another right from the beginning.
We quickly took over the top floor of our family home in Redland. Like something out of a Nancy Meyer’s film, it was a world of pink wisteria wallpaper, matching duvets and a carefully curated line up of soft toys. Scaletrics were spewed out across the floor as per Dad’s influence, and Tamagotchis were banished to a locked cupboard to deafen their screeches.
It was always hilariously eventful, crossing over into the dramatic. There was the time when, against her advice, I phoned 999 and we received an emergency visit from the local fire brigade. There were the times she tried to drown me in the bath — which was, come to think of it, the only time she disobeyed parental orders and got a stern talking to. The time she was so terrified by the hyenas of the Lion King, she placed a household ban on the VHS tape. My assurances that ‘it was just a man drawing cartoons’ went unnoticed. And not forgetting the time I tried to bend the laws of physics and, again, against her advice, utilise the washing line as a makeshift monkey bars. She stood watching as I plummeted, and then again as I was driven off to the emergency room. But was kind enough not to say, ‘I told you so’. I’m sure she thought I was a complete liability, who is this idiot they’ve brought into our home.
Summers of bouncy castles, ball pools, sticky hands and Strawberry Ribena were cut short when we were plucked from home into our new house. It was, to say the least, a culture shock. Splinters, beds that rolled on blackened floorboards, no kitchen (apart from a sink plucked from a skip), 5am wake-up calls from caged lions and a creepy, tear-blotted letter from a Victorian child we found hidden inside a fireplace. But this was all tolerable. The biggest drawback, by far, was that we had to have separate bedrooms. It simply wouldn’t do.
It didn’t take long before we devised a plan to be back together again. I would take one for the team and sleep on the floor beside her bed in the faithful ‘bed in the bag’ (my mum wishes me to point out that we had carpet fitted by this point). At night, I’d peer up to see her lying in her princess canopy bed. Admittedly it was more like a mosquito net from Ikea – but from where I was lying among the dust bunnies, it looked like something from the palace of Versailles. But I honestly felt as if I’d won the lottery. To be lying beside her chatting into the night and putting the world to rights.
This feeling – the fun, the trust, the contentment, the desperation to be close together – has never left me. It has been an anchoring for my entire existence — especially so in the last few years where we have lived together under the same roof and championed each other through immense challenges.
Today, it’s too painful to dwell on this incomprehensible loss. I want to focus on all that I’ve gained. Because, to be understood, supported and loved in that way aren’t things that can be undone or forgotten, it has made me everything I am today. So I am going to share with you a philosophy of life according to my sister. While I’ll surely rediscover many more things, these are ten key lessons she has taught me…
Always make to do lists. There are few tasks that cannot be surmounted if they are first scrawled on paper. This, we agreed, was her only Virgo trait. And something I’m now working on.
Embrace your scars. As she once said, ‘they're all part of my story’. This was a throwaway comment, but it’s something that has stayed with me.
Making people feel good about themselves is one of the most empowering things you can do – it costs nothing and makes the world an infinitely kinder place.
Never complain about your circumstances, it changes nothing and you’re not owed anything (unless, you’re in a restaurant and those circumstances concern the lamentable state of a roast potato – in that case she’d say, fire away).
If you wish to succeed in anything, you cannot leave it to chance. Achievement requires endless hard work and self-belief. Even if you’re not the best at something, you can be. From the very beginning, watching how her determination and work ethic allowed her to reach her aspirations, inspired me to believe that I could do the same.
Fun and humour can be found anywhere if you look hard enough.
Sophie taught me what it really means to be a confident person. Her definition of confidence is extremely rare. It was a complete self-assurance, a generosity towards others, and a knowledge of what she deserved. It’s not about being the loudest or most flamboyant person, it’s about having the ability to shift the energy of a room simply through your own warmth and light.
As she frequently told me, I have much to learn from her skills in diplomacy – the ability to stay cool, calm and composed in the face of injustices and family disputes. I promise I’m working on it.
Her bravery has been a guiding light. If we ever went through a medical procedure she would put me at ease, tell me what to expect and convince me it wasn’t going to be that bad. I know this is what made her a wonderful doctor.
And finally, her last, and perhaps, greatest lesson. Too often, we approach life without any awareness of how fragile it can be — our future is so assumed that we sometimes undervalue our present. Through Sophie, I have been reminded that the present moment is all that is guaranteed. And I must use it wisely. I know this is what she wanted for me. To embrace joy wherever I find it, and keep finding the light even in the darkest moments. From now on, I promise to experience every present moment for the both of us.
