Missing a Sister Who is Still Somehow Here on Social Media

After all, if I could still see her, hear her and text her, was she really gone? If Facebook reminded me annually of her birthday and calculated the passing years into her current age, then her death wasn’t a period or an end but more of an ellipsis, and I could still imagine the “…” of a chat bubble popping up at any moment.

When someone you love disappears, there’s no finality of an autopsy report or the closure of a funeral. All you have is a lack of presence. You can piece together the mystery like in the Nancy Drew books you used to devour, but there’s no memorial service to confirm the truth. And that’s the problem: The promise of possibility, however faint, is harsher than any certainty.

It has now been five years since her disappearance, and I still fantasize about an alternate outcome. That senseless hope is hard to smother, the off-chance that someday I may see her face in a crowd, as familiar as my own reflection. I’ll run toward her and save her this time.....Facebook cannot mimic my sister’s flowery handwriting, remind me how she smelled when wearing her favorite perfume or hug me the way she used to. But it can preserve the post she left on my wall six years ago that reads, “I love you.”

Sometimes, that’s enough.

Years Ago My Sister Vanished. I See Her Whenever I Want