"I miss my sister. Every night at ten or so, she used to call me on the phone… And when I asked her why, she told me that her body told her she wanted to hear my voice. I miss my sister. The smell of her shampoo. The way she could always convince me to read her another book. When you love someone like I loved her, they're a part of you. It's like you're attached by this invisible tether and no matter how far away you are… You can always feel them. And now every time I reach for that tether, I know there's no one on the other end, and I feel like I'm falling into nothingness. Then I remember Jean. I remember a life led with no enemies, no resentments, no regrets, and I'm inspired to get up out of bed and go on. I miss my sister so much. It feels like a piece of me has been ripped off. Just one more time I want to hold her. Ten more seconds, is that too much to ask? For ten more seconds to hold her? But I can't, and I won't. Now the only thing keeping me from being swallowed whole by sadness is that Jean would kill me if I did. So for now, I'm just going to miss her. I love you, Jeanie. Rest in peace."

I decided I didn't like funerals very much. 


I was turning into Santana again, heart hurting. I wanted to explain my fear. I wanted to tell her that I felt her attached to me, heart and soul. That every time she exhaled, I inhaled as if I might catch the same air. That when her heart beat, mine echoed it, a perfect harmony. I wanted to tell her that I understood Coach Sylvester's speech and that I was afraid of our tether breaking, afraid of losing her, afraid she'd leave me alone and I would fall into that nothingness that coach had mentioned. I wanted to tell her that I thought it was probably dark down there and I'd always been afraid of the dark and I didn't want to go anywhere that she didn't light up with her presence.

But then I realized that as long as our hearts were still beating, the tether would forever be unbroken. And even then, I thought, maybe it only stretched from earth to Heaven until we met up and it could snap us back together again.