My Sister, Beth Kerns

Some of my frequent readers will have noticed that it’s been awhile since I’ve posted a new blog.  I like to have at least one new post a week and I’ve been slack.  It’s an odd time of the year for me.  It’s closing in on my sister’s birthday, her thirtieth.

On my own thirtieth birthday I bought myself a tiara and a purple feather boa, mixed up a pitcher of margaritas and sat outside on the deck all day reading a romance novel.  Beth called to tease me about being “old.”  She’s five years behind me so I told her I had five years to plot revenge for her own thirtieth if she didn’t leave me be.  She just laughed and told me she was never going to turn thirty.

Beth and I always had a contentious relationship.  We had a brother between us and a sister five years behind Beth, but it was the two of us who were mortal enemies growing up.  I recall once throwing a shoe at Beth, her ducking out of the way, and it hitting my father squarely in the chest.  That the shoes were hers and she was justified in making me give them back was of no consequence.  We fought about anything and hated each other with a passion.  It was only after Rich and I moved our little family to Raleigh that Beth and I realized we hated each other so much because we were just alike.  It was quite a blow for both of us, but we took it in stride and began a friendship that sustained as much volatility as our past hatred.  I thank God all the time for that friendship because precious as it was, it was also very brief.

On June the 8^th, 2003, Beth died in a plane crash.  She was a pilot with a good job lined up.  The only requirement left was a weekend course to get her multi-engine license.  She came to stay with us here in Raleigh, arrived the evening before her class started, left early in the morning, and never came back.  To this day I can’t believe I didn’t get out of bed that morning to hug her goodbye.  Can’t get over the idea that she was dead while her cell phone kept ringing as I left her messages asking if she would be home for dinner.

It was days after her funeral before I could go to the airport to retrieve her car.  When I did, it was completely out of gas.  I put a little in the tank and drove home, the radio blaring, singing at the top of my lungs, howling-crying like a lunatic.  And it wasn’t just the gas.  When I gathered her things, all her toiletries were empty.  Bottles of hairspray, conditioner, and lotions down to the very last smidge.  Eye shadow used to the last crumbly corner.  Lipsticks worn flat and then feathered into with brush lines.  Perfumes only a whiff of scent.  Everything was used up.  She had no money in her checking account and only nineteen dollars available on her credit card.  No cash was on her and none was in her car.  Not a cent.  That utter finality still gives me chills.  She wasn’t meant to come back that day.

Much as I’d like to eulogize her properly, it’s hard to think of Beth with sadness.  She was more a force of nature.  And though she was only twenty-six when she died, she had done more than many people do in a lifetime.  She lifeguarded on the Atlantic Ocean, waited tables in a nightclub in Providence, flew out of Syracuse as a flight attendant.  She vacationed in Puerto Rico and went to Europe twice.  She saw the Eiffel Tower, the Arch de Triomph, Anne Frank’s home, and Notre Dame Cathedral.  She dated an Italian man who brought her stilettos from Italy.  She dated a fellow pilot, an Irish man who brought her to meet his family in the Netherlands.  She dated a minor league baseball player whose team signed a baseball because she wanted one to give her nephew.  In twenty-six years she squeezed in a lot.

She had a fierce loyalty to her friends and inspired loyalty in others.  Her wake was packed with people who flew in to West Virginia from all over the place to offer condolences to us, her family, whom they had never met.  She was supposed to have been a bridesmaid in a wedding the weekend of her funeral.  I remember calling the bride, telling her Beth wouldn’t be able to come.  That entire wedding party drove eight hours to show up for her wake, a day and a half before their wedding took place.  Rich tells me he’s never seen anything like what happened at her wake.  Mom, Dad, Scott, Kristen and I were lined up, greeting people for hours and hours and hours.  The line stretched outside and around the block, full of people waiting to come in.  I heard it was on the news.  A friend taped the segment for me, but I’ve never been able to watch.

What else can I tell you about Beth?  I’ve always been a Christian,  but only since she died have I felt absolute proof of an afterlife.  Sometimes her presence is as heavy as if she’s right beside me telling a joke or telling a secret or telling me the new red hair dye is too bright.  When I dream of her, I can smell her.  Once when I was wearing a shirt that belonged to her, I looked in the mirror and saw her face in place of my own.  Now, that was strange, but then the next day my baby sister Kristen told me about a strange thing that had happened to her the day before when she looked in her mirror.  You see?  That’s just Beth through and through, making jokes from Heaven.  Probably taking a break from teaching a group of angels about leather pants and the lyrics to “Sin Wagon” by the Dixie Chicks.

May 14^th would have been her thirtieth birthday.  I made up a bouquet for her mausoleum marker and I wanted in the worst way to make it black and funereal and all grim with the sentiments of a thirtieth birthday.  Mom and I laughed like loons over the idea and how mad Beth would be about it.  But we knew it would be awful for any other visitors to her site, so I went with pretty spring colors and her favorite green for ribbon.   It’s been almost four years since she died and sometimes the pain catches me by surprise and takes my breath away, but next Monday I’m pretty sure I’ll be smiling at the idea of her grinning down from Heaven with an “I told you so” look as I shake my head and think of how weirdly right she was that she would never turn thirty.

Originally published May 10th, 2007, this post is three years old, but today, on Beth’s birthday, it’s all the same to me.  I miss my sister very much and wish she was still here to raise a glass and celebrate her day.

Tagged as: Family, Friends, Heartbreak